The U.S. Department of Justice will send federal election monitors to five California counties in the midst of the state’s special election on redistricting — at the request of the Republican Party of California.
The party’s chair, Corrin Rankin, asked federal officials to send monitors to observe the election administration in Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, Fresno and San Bernardino counties. The party, Rankin alleged, has “received reports of irregularities in these counties that we fear will undermine either the willingness of voters to participate in the election or their confidence in the announced results of the election.”
Read more: DOJ prepares to send election monitors to California, New Jersey following requests from state GOPs
A special election is underway in California where voters are deciding whether to implement new congressional maps for the 2026, 2028 and 2030 elections. The partisan effort is designed to boost Democrats in California’s congressional elections as a way to counter similar, Republican-led plans in Texas, Missouri and North Carolina that are meant to benefit the GOP.
Rankin sent the letter, obtained by the Southern California News Group, on Oct. 20 to Harmeet Dhillon, an assistant U.S. attorney general and former vice chair of the Republican Party of California.
“Justified concerns with Orange and Los Angeles Counties arise from their voter list maintenance practices,” Rankin said, pointing to the Justice Department’s lawsuit against Orange County Registrar of Voters Bob Page.
The Justice Department sued Page in June for allegedly not providing full records related to the removal of non-citizens from voter registration lists. Page responded to the federal government’s request but redacted certain personal and sensitive information, including driver’s license or state ID numbers, Social Security numbers, language preferences, race and signature images — in line with state and federal law, the county’s attorneys have noted.
Meanwhile, Rankin said Riverside County “has an ongoing problem of sending duplicate ballots to voters and recently had to fire its Registrar of Voters.”
There, a computer error caused duplicate ballots to be mailed to voters in 2022. And in 2020, about 42,000 Riverside County voters received more than one ballot in the mail, as did more than 27,000 people in San Bernardino County, which was not included in the CAGOP’s request.
Rebecca Spencer resigned from her post as Riverside’s elections chief in 2023, after she was placed on paid administrative leave.
The Justice Department said on Friday that it would send officials to observe election polling sites in the five California counties, as well as in Passaic County, New Jersey.
Read the full request from the Republican Party of California below.