State agent. Gen. Rob Bonta said Monday that he expects the Trump administration, which announced plans last week to use federal election observers in California, will use them to contest the results of the Nov. 4 special election.
Bonta, California’s top law enforcement official, said in a call with reporters that he was “100%” concerned about false accusations of fraud at voting locations.
Bonta said it would be “naive” to think Trump would accept the Nov. 4 election results, given Trump’s history of lying about election results, including his loss to President Biden in 2020.
The attorney general also warned that Trump’s tactics could be a harbinger of what the country will see in the 2026 election, where control of the U.S. House of Representatives and the fate of Trump’s controversial political agenda are at stake.
“All the signs, all the arrows point to this being a run-up to something more dangerous in the 2026 midterm elections and perhaps beyond,” Bonta said.
Election monitors will be sent to the five California counties where voters are voting in the Proposition 50 election to decide whether to redraw the state’s legislative boundaries.
The Justice Department announced last week that federal election monitors would visit sites throughout Southern California and in the Central Valley (Fresno, Kern, Los Angeles, Orange and Riverside counties).
Gov. Gavin Newsom called the move a “scare tactic” aimed at curbing support for Prop. 50 and inappropriate federal interference in state elections.
Federal oversight is commonplace, especially in federal elections, but has recently been met with growing skepticism from both parties. When President Biden’s Justice Department announced it would conduct surveillance in 27 states and 86 jurisdictions during last November’s presidential election, some Republican-led states balked and tried to block the effort.
Democrats are highly suspicious of the Trump administration’s election surveillance plans, in part because the president has relentlessly denied past election defeats (including his own loss to Biden in 2020) and appointed fellow election deniers to key positions in his administration, including the Justice Department.
The California Republican Party requested election observers and cited several concerns about voting patterns and issues in several counties, according to a letter sent by the California Republican Party to the Justice Department.
In his remarks Monday, Bonta questioned Republican claims and denied the existence of widespread fraud that would require federal election observers. He compared the monitors to President Trump’s decision to send the National Guard to Democratic-led cities despite protests from local politicians who said the military was not needed.
More broadly, Bonta told reporters that the Trump administration appears prepared to challenge the Nov. 4 results if Prop. 50 passes.
“People vote and they accept the will of the voters. That’s democracy. But that’s not what they impose on themselves based on everything we’ve seen and everything we’ve been told,” Bonta said.
Bonta also said the state will likely send observers from his office, secretary of state and county registrar to monitor federal observers at polling places.
Early voting has already begun in California, with voters deciding whether to temporarily redraw the state’s congressional district boundaries. The Democratic-led California Legislature put the bill on the Nov. 4 ballot to increase the party’s representation in the U.S. House of Representatives.
Newsom and other supporters of the bill said they generally support an independent redistricting process and would push for the creation of bipartisan commissions across the country, but argued that Democrats need to counter President Trump’s current efforts to force Republican states to redraw congressional districts so that Republicans can maintain control of Congress after the 2026 election.
President Trump on Sunday urged California voters not to vote by mail or vote early in the state’s elections, a message contrary to the message of the state’s Republican leaders who have expressed concern about low turnout.
Republicans have traditionally voted by mail in California elections, but Democrats were more likely to vote on Election Day. But President Trump has long argued that voting by mail is not secure, despite assurances from election officials, which may explain why so many Republicans now vote in person.
Natalie Baldassar, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Department of Justice, declined to comment on Bonta’s remarks. Baldassare also declined to say how many election observers will work in California.
David Becker, executive director of the nonpartisan, nonprofit Center for Election Innovation and Research, said in an interview last week that federal election monitors monitor polling places to ensure compliance with federal voting rights laws and are trained to monitor and act as “flies on the wall.”
“Typically, what you do is go inside, step off to the side, far enough away from where the voters are, and take notes,” said Becker, an attorney who previously worked in the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division.
