Category: politics

Federal monitors to descend on 2 blue states as Trump DOJ pursues ‘election integrity’

President Donald Trump’s Justice Department is planning to send federal election monitors to California and New Jersey next month after receiving requests from state Republican officials. The Justice Department said it would send monitors to Passaic County, New Jersey, as well as to Los Angeles, Orange, Kern, Riverside and Fresno counties in California. Federal authorities claim they want to “ensure transparency, ballot security, and compliance with federal law.”“Transparency at the polls translates into faith in the electoral process, and this Department of Justice is committed to upholding the highest standards of election integrity,” Attorney General Pam Bondi told The Associated Press in a statement. The Guardian called the move efforts the “latest salvo” in Republicans’ “preoccupation with election integrity after Donald Trump spent years refusing to accept the results of the 2020 election and falsely railing against mail-in voting as rife with fraud. Democrats fear the new administration will attempt to gain an upper hand in next year’s midterms with similarly unfounded allegations of fraud,” the report noted.“In recent elections, we have received reports of irregularities in these counties that we fear will undermine either the willingness of voters to participate in the election or their confidence in the announced results of the election,” wrote California Republican chair Corrin Rankin. The two states both have elections with broader ramifications. California voters will decide on a Democratic-backed constitutional amendment that would authorize the use of new congressional district maps for the 2026 through 2030 election cycles. The measure was a direct response to Texas’s mid-cycle redistricting, which was aimed at bolstering Republican control of the House. The California measure aims to counterbalance that by redistricting five GOP-held districts to be more favorable to Democrats. New Jersey voters, meanwhile, will cast ballots for governor, lieutenant governor, and all 80 seats in the state’s General Assembly.