The Division of Justice introduced on Friday that it will monitor polls in six closely Latino counties in New Jersey and California throughout elections held on Nov. 4.
The announcement comes as issues mount about how the Trump administration might search to intervene with and undermine U.S. elections. President Donald Trump has repeatedly forged doubt on election leads to each election cycle since he first ran for president, together with making an attempt to steal the 2020 election. In March, Trump issued an government order purporting to change election legal guidelines to require proof of citizenship on the polls, however this was blocked by a court docket because the president has no unilateral position in setting election legal guidelines.
Rick Hasen, an election legislation professor at UCLA, known as the DOJ announcement a “Test run for 2026.”
Amid gubernatorial and state legislative elections in New Jersey and a California poll initiative election that may allow the legislature to redraw the state’s congressional maps, the DOJ’s screens will seem at polling areas in Passaic County, New Jersey, and Los Angeles, Fresno, Riverside, Kern and Orange counties in California.
Passaic County has the best proportion Latino inhabitants in New Jersey at almost 43%. Each Fresno and Kern are majority Latino counties whereas Los Angeles, Riverside and Orange are among the many California counties with the best Latino populations, every exceeding 1 million. Los Angeles County has a Latino inhabitants of 4.8 million. A majority of the inhabitants in all of those counties, aside from Los Angeles and Orange, voted for Trump in 2024.
Andrew Harnik through Getty Photos
The New Jersey state Republican Celebration requested screens in Passaic County after the county election board rejected Republican requests for the usage of video cameras and logbooks in mail voting storage and counting rooms.
“The Trump Department of Justice’s announcement that it is sending federal ‘election monitors’ to Passaic County is highly inappropriate, and DOJ has not even attempted to identify a legitimate basis for its actions,” New Jersey Lawyer Common Matt Platkin (D) mentioned in a press release.
DOJ claims that its monitoring by means of its Civil Rights Division is supposed to “ensure transparency, ballot security, and compliance with federal law.” The Civil Rights Division does routinely monitor polls to make sure that states will not be suppressing minority voters and stay in compliance with the Voting Rights Act. The Trump administration, nevertheless, is brazenly against the Voting Rights Act and the Civil Rights Division has inverted the unique intent of civil rights legislation to make supposed anti-white discrimination its precedence.
“The Department of Justice will do everything necessary to protect the votes of eligible American citizens, ensuring our elections are safe and secure,” Assistant Lawyer Common Harmeet Ok. Dhillon of the Civil Rights Division mentioned in a press release. “Transparent election processes and election monitoring are critical tools for safeguarding our elections and ensuring public trust in the integrity of our elections.”
The important thing phrase on this assertion is “eligible.” The Trump administration and Republican officers throughout the nation have falsely claimed that noncitizen voting is rampant in U.S. elections. That’s false. However this falsehood is the justification behind Trump’s push for a proof of citizenship requirement for voting and for quite a few bogus authorized complaints filed within the run-up to the 2024 election.
What federal screens could also be searching for stays to be seen.
