President Trump’s monitors better not mess up California’s election | Opinion
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Justice Department plans monitors in five California counties, raising political concerns.
- Local officials report routine election operations and welcome accredited observers.
- Critics say monitoring could intimidate voters and politicize a state redistricting vote.
Five years after President Donald Trump lost the 2020 election to Democrat Joe Biden, he still disputes he was on the loser.
This despite how his 60-plus challenges to the results of that election did not change one single outcome in any state. In fact, he prevailed in just one of 30 cases that actually made it to trial, and that was on a technicality.
So I am more than a little skeptical at news that Trump 2.0 and his Justice Department officials are sending monitors to Fresno County to observe the Nov. 4 special statewide election. The off-year balloting is happening because Gov. Gavin Newsom wants voters to approve new maps for congressional districts that potentially could yield California five more Democratic representatives. If Democrats take back the majority in the House of Representatives, that could thwart Trump’s agenda in his final years in office.
Newsom’s special election is a reaction to Trump calling on Texas Republicans to redraw their maps to gain five GOP seats — and they did just that after his request.
It’s all politics.
In a news release sent out last week, the federal Justice Department makes claims about the need for election monitoring that seem credible.
“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,” U.S. Attorney General Pamela Bondi says in the news release. “We will commit the resources necessary to ensure the American people get the fair, free, and transparent elections they deserve.”
No one opposes the ideal of free, fair and transparent elections. That is exactly what has occurred in Fresno County since at least 2013, when I began working at The Bee. I was hired as the metro editor, in charge of the local news team. When elections came around, we had reporters assigned to cover the major races. We never did any stories about widespread election irregularities. In 2018, I shifted to the opinion side of the newsroom. From then to now, no big election problems were reported.
Were there isolated issues, like lost or late ballots? Of course. It is impossible to run a major election in a county as big as Fresno (over 1 million people) and not have some snafus develop. It is safe to say there is not a single county in America free from some sort of election mishap every time balloting occurs. Problems simply happen in human-run systems.
But it is a leap of logic to say voting problems equal an untrustworthy result. Raising the specter of problems, as Trump routinely does, casts doubt on a system that functions better than almost anywhere else in the world.
That is why the announcement from Bondi is troubling. She is sowing doubt in the minds of voters, certainly Republicans.
Why would she do that? Newsom says it is to intimidate California voters, and I’d have to agree with him.
Besides Fresno, the other counties the DOJ will send election monitors to are Los Angeles, Kern, Orange and Riverside.
Election integrity paramount
Corrin Rankin, the head of the California Republican Party, sought the DOJ’s help because her group “received ‘reports of irregularities’ in each of the counties during recent elections,” the Los Angeles Times reported.
Specific to Fresno County, Rankin told the DOJ about “shifting ballot cure deadlines,” the Times said.
When a voter forgets to sign the back of their ballot, that ballot gets put aside by county election workers. A letter is then sent to the voter asking for a signature. If that matches what the county has on record, the ballot gets “cured” and counted. The letter has to be returned by a set deadline.
James Kus, Fresno County’s elections chief and county clerk, said he has followed cure-letter deadlines allowed by the state. “I have never had any interaction with the Republican Party about that, so don’t know why they consider it a problem,” he told me in a phone interview.
Kus said federal monitors did visit a Fresno County election in 2016 to check if polling places were accessible to disabled voters. Previously some polling places had accessibility difficulties. Kus said changes made in 2019 took care of those challenges.
He said having observers watch election workers process ballots is common, and he welcomes anyone to do so if they follow some basic guidelines. Observers are able to watch election staff at the downtown elections office as well as satellite locations where ballots are processed.
But as of Monday, Kus said no one from the DOJ has contacted him about the monitors.
“We in Fresno County welcome any and all observers,” he said.
Keep Fresno County election free and fair
I called the Fresno County Republican Party to learn if it had concerns, but did not hear back from the group’s president.
Fresno County has 530,000 registered voters. As of Monday, nearly 100,000 ballots had been returned for the Nov. 4 special election. Such irregular balloting typically draws few voters, so Kus is encouraged that turnout this time could be better than usual for a special election.
Hopefully the DOJ monitors keep a low profile. This is a state, not federal, contest. If Bondi really wants an election that is free and fair, her DOJ reps will not mess it up.
