The Department of Justice is deploying federal election observers to California and New Jersey, setting up a likely clash with state officials, according to an MSNBC analyst.
Attorney General Pam Bondi announced late last month that election monitors were necessary to ensure "fair, free, and transparent elections" in Tuesday's votes, but MSNBC's Hayes Brown questioned the DOJ's authority in the matter and warned the move seemed to be part of a broader effort to tip next year's midterms to Republicans.
"Under the Constitution, states are charged with conducting elections, with federal laws only rarely superseding that authority," Brown wrote. "The two states where DOJ observers will be present don’t have elections with any federal component that would invite Bondi’s intervention."
California voters will decide on a measure to change the state constitution to allow the Democratic-led legislature to redraw congressional maps in response to Republican gerrymandering in Texas and other states, while New Jersey voters will cast ballots for state legislature and governor.
"The Justice Department chose to involve itself in the proceedings only after a request from each state’s Republican Party," Brown wrote.
New Jersey's Republican Party wrote to Harmeet Dhillon, head of the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division, arguing that monitors were necessary because of an alleged “long sordid history of [vote-by-mail] fraud,” referring to an ongoing fraud case in a 2020 city council race, while California Republicans expressed concerns about voter lists in Orange and Los Angeles counties.
But experts are skeptical they have jurisdiction in the matter.
"It’s a very high bar to justify Washington’s intervention into state-only elections,” said former DOJ attorney David Becker, now executive director of the Center for Election Integrity & Research.
Monitors must obey rules forbidding them from interacting with voters, poll workers or ballot counting, Becker said, and the administration lacks a required court order in either state to deploy federal election observers, whose authority is limited to ensuring anti-discrimination laws are upheld.
"But with Bondi and Dhillon running the show at the Justice Department under President Donald Trump, the usual rules may not apply," Brown wrote. "After all, working within the exact spirit of the law, let alone the letter, hasn’t been this administration’s preferred approach."
"Here, Bondi and Dhillon are following Trump’s marching orders in his war on early voting and mail-in ballots," he added. "That will likely set up a clash with state election officials, especially when you consider that more than 80 percent of Californians voted by mail in 2024."
Brown sees the attorney general's move as part of a worrying trend pointing toward next year's congressional elections.
"The slew of election deniers now being put in place in key roles around the country, paired with the Justice Department’s groundwork to suggest fraud without evidence, portends a much more fraught election experience this time next year," Brown wrote.
"The federal election monitors on the ground in California and New Jersey likely will not affect the results of Tuesday’s contests. But their presence both telegraphs a political message — a show of force to rally their supporters and cow their opponents — and could be used as justification for more overt intimidation in future elections."