SACRAMENTO, California — California is sending its own watchers to watch the federal watchers. Governor Gavin Newsom says the state and the California Democratic Party will deploy 134 election law attorneys and roughly 1,000 trained voter-protection volunteers to polling places and county election offices on Tuesday, November 3, to monitor the Trump administration's own federal election observers and to guard the count in the state's closest congressional races.
Newsom first announced the plan during an appearance on 'Jimmy Kimmel Live!' on Wednesday night, October 28, then repeated it Thursday on social media with a direct warning to President Donald Trump. 'A warning to Donald Trump: I'm deploying election lawyers to key battleground districts in California to protect every vote. And I just made it a FELONY to illegally seize ballots,' he wrote.
Where the teams will be
The attorneys will be pre-deployed to county registrars' offices in the counties covered by the 6th, 13th, 22nd, 45th and 48th congressional districts — the competitive map drawn under Proposition 50 — and will stay through the count 'for as long as it takes,' Newsom said. Of the five, only the 22nd district, in the southern San Joaquin Valley around Bakersfield, is rated a toss-up by the Cook Political Report. The California Democratic Party says its nearly 1,000 trained volunteers include more than 800 poll observers and 54 hotline operators, with a multilingual voter-protection hotline for voters who hit problems at polling stations.
Two of the five districts — the 13th, covering Merced, Modesto and Madera, and the 22nd, covering Bakersfield and parts of Kern and Tulare counties — run through Central Valley communities where many Punjabi families farm, run businesses and drive trucks, and where mail ballots and long counts are a normal part of every election.
The court fight behind the announcement
The deployment is the latest move in a running legal war between California and the U.S. Justice Department over the midterms. The department has announced federal observers for key California voting locations, and it sued to force election officials to set aside the ballots of roughly 20,000 registered voters it says may not be citizens. On Wednesday, a federal judge in Los Angeles ruled against the Justice Department and sided with the state, saying California has the authority to administer its own elections, CBS News reported. The department has appealed: First Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli said he had filed a notice of appeal, and prosecutors have also subpoenaed California election officials to appear with internal documents the day after the election, the Los Angeles Times reported.
'A federal badge is not a license to intimidate voters or interfere with an election. We beat Trump's redistricting power grab. And if he tries to steal this election, we'll beat him again,' Newsom said in his statement. California Democratic Party Chair Rusty Hicks said: 'Donald Trump doesn't get to decide which votes count, which ballots get counted, or who wins an election. California voters do.'
Newsom pointed to a new state law making it a felony to illegally seize ballots before results are certified. A separate law he signed last month, Senate Bill 884, the Protect Our Polls Act, bars law enforcement officers — including federal immigration officers — from operating within 200 feet of polling places and ballot drop boxes, with exceptions for a felony in progress and emergencies.
Republican and expert reaction
Sacramento County Republican Party Chair Sue Blake mocked the layering of observers. 'This is like Plato's Republic where we have to have watchers watch the watchers,' she told CBS Sacramento. 'I think that both parties are going to have their individual watchers, so now we have watchers, watching the watchers, watching the watchers.' The Sacramento County Registrar's Office has confirmed the Justice Department has contacted it to say federal observers will be present on Election Day.
Mindy Romero, director of the nonpartisan Center for Inclusive Democracy, warned against turning election administration into a partisan contest. 'I just want to see this not be further politicized or made into a partisan dynamic,' she said. 'We need to be pushing people back, and understand that this is democracy for all.'
Background: the wider monitors dispute
California is one front in a national fight over federal election monitoring. The Justice Department has described a nationwide plan of roughly 1,000 monitors across all 50 states for November 3. In a separate federal case brought by the NAACP, the department told a court this week that no FBI or ICE employees will serve as monitors, that monitors will be unarmed, and that they will observe, take notes and interview willing voters outside polling places without interfering — while staff from the Bureau of Prisons, the ATF and the DEA may still take part.
What happens next
Polls close in California at 8 p.m. Pacific on Tuesday, November 3, but the state's count routinely runs for days or weeks as mail ballots postmarked by Election Day arrive and are verified. The state's attorney teams say they will remain at county election offices for that whole count. The Justice Department's appeal over the 20,000 disputed ballots is pending, and both sides are preparing for further court hearings after Election Day — meaning the argument over who watches California's vote is likely to outlast the vote itself.