The United States Department of Justice is preparing to send federal election observers to California and New Jersey next month, targeting two Democratic strongholds holding off-year elections following requests from state Republican parties.

The Justice Department announced Friday that it is planning to monitor polling sites in Passaic County, New Jersey, and five counties in southern and central California: Los Angeles, Orange, Kern, Riverside and Fresno.

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The goal, according to the department, is “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 Pamela Bondi said in a statement to The Associated Press.

Election monitoring is a routine function of the Justice Department, but the focus on California and New Jersey comes as both states are set to hold closely watched elections with national consequences on November 4.

New Jersey has an open seat for governor that has attracted major spending by both parties, and California is holding a special election aimed at redrawing the state’s congressional map to counter Republican gerrymandering efforts elsewhere in the run-up to the 2026 midterms.

The Justice Department’s efforts are also the latest salvo in the Republican Party’s preoccupation with election integrity, after President Donald Trump spent years refusing to accept the results of the 2020 election.

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Democrats fear the new administration will attempt to gain an upper hand in next year’s midterms with similarly unfounded allegations of fraud.

The announcement comes days after the Republican leaders in both states wrote letters to the Justice Department requesting their assistance. Some leading Democrats in the states blasted the decision.

New Jersey Attorney General Matt Platkin called the move “highly inappropriate” and said the Justice Department “has not even attempted to identify a legitimate basis for its actions”.

In a statement, Rusty Hicks, chair of the California Democratic Party, said, “No amount of election interference by the California Republican Party is going to silence the voices of California voters.”

California’s House districts at stake

The letter from the California Republican Party, sent on Monday and obtained by The Associated Press, asked the Justice Department’s civil rights head, Harmeet Dhillon, to provide monitors to observe the election in the five counties.

“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 GOP Chairwoman Corrin Rankin.

The state is set to vote on a redistricting proposition that would dramatically redraw California’s congressional lines to add as many as five additional Democratic seats to its US House delegation.

Each of the counties named, state Republican leaders alleged, has experienced recent voting issues, such as sending incorrect or duplicate ballots to voters. They also take issue with how Los Angeles and Orange counties maintain their voter rolls.

California is one of at least eight states the Justice Department has sued as part of a wide-ranging request for detailed voter roll information. The department has not said why it wants the data.

Brandon Richards, a spokesperson for Governor Gavin Newsom, said the Justice Department has no standing to “interfere” with California’s election.

He pointed out that November’s ballot contains only a state-specific initiative and has no federal races.

“Deploying these federal forces appears to be an intimidation tactic meant for one thing: suppress the vote,” Richards said in an email.

Orange County Registrar of Voters Bob Page said he welcomes anyone who wants to watch the county’s election operations and said it is common to have local, state, federal and even international observers. He described Orange County’s elections as “accessible, accurate, fair, secure, and transparent”.

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Los Angeles County Clerk Dean Logan said election observers are standard practice across the country and that the county, with 5.8 million registered voters, is continuously updating and verifying its voter records.

“Voters can have confidence their ballot is handled securely and counted accurately,” he said.

Most Californians vote using mail ballots returned through the postal service, drop boxes or at local voting centres, which typically leaves polling places relatively quiet on Election Day.

But in pursuit of accuracy and counting every vote, the nation’s most populous state has gained a reputation for tallies that can drag on for weeks — and sometimes longer.

In 2024, it took until early December to declare Democrat Adam Gray the winner in his Central Valley district, the final congressional race to be decided in the nation last year.

Passaic County the target in New Jersey

California’s request echoed a similar letter sent by New Jersey Republicans.

They asked the Department of Justice to dispatch election monitors to “oversee the receipt and processing of vote-by-mail ballots” and “monitor access to the Board of Elections around the clock” in suburban Passaic County in advance of the state’s governor’s race.

The New Jersey Republican State Committee told Dhillon that federal intervention was necessary to ensure an accurate vote count in the heavily Latino county that was once a Democratic stronghold but shifted to President Donald Trump’s column in last year’s presidential race.

The county could be critical to Republican gubernatorial nominee Jack Ciattarelli’s hopes against Democrat Mikie Sherrill. But the letter cited previous voter fraud cases in the county and alleged a “long and sordid history” of vote-by-mail shenanigans.

In 2020, a judge ordered a new election for a city council seat in Paterson — the largest city in Passaic County — after the apparent winner and others were charged with voter fraud.

Platkin said the state is committed to ensuring its elections are fair and secure. With the Justice Department’s announcement, he said the attorney general’s office is “considering all of our options to prevent any effort to intimidate voters or interfere with our elections”.

Election observers are nothing new

Local election offices and polling places around the country already have observers from both political parties to ensure rules are followed.

The Justice Department also has a long history of sending observers to jurisdictions that have histories of voting rights violations to ensure compliance with federal civil rights laws.

Last year, when the administration of President Joe Biden was still in power, some Republican-led states said they would not allow federal monitors to access voting locations on Election Day.

Trump has railed for years against mail voting as part of his repeated false claims that Biden’s victory in 2020 was rigged. He alleges it is riddled with fraud, even though numerous studies have found no evidence of widespread fraud in US elections.

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Earlier this year, Trump pledged to ban vote-by-mail across the country, something he has no power to do under the US Constitution.

The Justice Department said its effort will be overseen by Dhillon’s Civil Rights Division, which will deploy personnel in coordination with US Attorney’s Offices and work closely with state and local officials.

The department is also soliciting further requests for monitoring in other jurisdictions.

David Becker, a former Justice Department lawyer who has served as an election monitor and trained them, said the work is typically done by department lawyers who are prohibited from interfering at polling places.

But Becker, now executive director of the Center for Election Integrity & Research, said local jurisdictions normally agree to the monitors’ presence.

If the administration tried to send monitors without a clear legal rationale to a place where local officials did not want them, “that could result in chaos,” he said.