California Attorney General Rob Bonta said Tuesday afternoon that his office will deploy its own election observers, responding to concerns that federal monitors sent by the Justice Department could intimidate voters.
Bonta said the state is following the same playbook it used during the previous two elections, when California dispatched its own observers to work alongside federal monitors.
The Justice Department's Civil Rights Division has sent 1,000 monitors across the country in what it describes as an effort to ensure election integrity and protect Americans' right to vote. The plan has been public knowledge for months, and the monitors are drawn from across the DOJ, U.S. Attorney's Offices and the Office of Personnel Management.
The department confirmed Tuesday that while federal election monitoring is routine, this year's operation is the largest in its history. For the first time, monitors are being deployed to all 50 states. A list released by the DOJ shows that in California, monitors are being sent to Los Angeles, Alameda, Sacramento and San Diego.
Bonta and other critics have argued that the unusually large federal presence could spook voters or discourage some people from casting ballots.
Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon, who leads the Civil Rights Division, told Bloomberg in an August interview that DOJ election monitors would observe election practices and pursue investigations into possible instances of fraud after the fact, rather than intervene directly while people are voting. In its Tuesday announcement, the DOJ added that monitors will also be responsible for ensuring polling places are accessible to voters with disabilities.
Dhillon also told Bloomberg that federal monitors would respect the laws of the states where they are deployed. Many states bar monitors from entering polling places and require them to stay behind designated boundaries outside. "We respect state law," Dhillon said at the time. "We reach out to the states. If their perimeter is 150 yards, we respect that."
Dhillon pointed out that the department sent more than 80 monitors to observe primary elections in seven states earlier this year, including locations in Minnesota, Michigan, Florida, Wyoming, South Carolina, Massachusetts and New Hampshire.
The nationwide deployment appeared to be proceeding without major incident Tuesday afternoon, with no significant confrontations involving federal monitors publicly reported.
The announcement comes a day after the Supreme Court on Monday rejected the Trump administration's effort to require California election officials to segregate ballots cast by 20,000 voters the DOJ believes are noncitizens.
