Despite the lack of evidence, President Donald Trump and his top aides continue to contend they need to keep fighting the alleged voter fraud he falsely blamed for his 2020 defeat.
As part of that, Trump has announced plans, mostly not yet implemented, to expand the federal role in state supervision of elections. This week, the Justice Department is sending federal agents to monitor off-year state elections in California and New Jersey.
While the department called election monitoring a routine function, some Democrats fear it’s the first step in making fraud claims this year — and next. “This is a preview of 2026,” warned California Gov. Gavin Newsom, referring to next year’s congressional elections. “Wake up, everybody.”
Its goal, the Justice Department said, is “to ensure transparency, ballot security and compliance with federal law.” While past administrations also sent federal monitors, there are no federal elections Tuesday, and the administration’s moves stem primarily from local GOP criticism of mail-in voting, a persistent target of criticism by Trump.
The main thing that has undermined confidence in recent American elections is Trump’s repeated false contention that the 2020 election was rigged against him — and his ability to convince many Republicans. Trump has made little secret of his intention, if not his means.
“We can never let what happened in the 2020 election happen again,” Trump said recently. “We just can’t let that happen. I know (FBI Director) Kash (Patel) is working on it, everybody is working on it. And certainly (National Intelligence Director) Tulsi (Gabbard) is working on it. We can’t let that happen again to our country.”
He has installed several 2020 election deniers in government roles that deal with election security, including Heather Honey, named in August as deputy secretary of homeland security for election integrity. According to The New York Times, Honey suggested to conservative activists before her appointment that the administration should declare a “national emergency” to justify dictating new election rules to the states.
Meanwhile, Newsom and Illinois Gov. J. B. Pritzker — both potential 2028 Democratic presidential candidates — said they feared Trump’s recent dispatch of National Guard troops to cities such as Los Angeles, Chicago and Portland to curb crime and assist the roundup of illegal immigrants is a forerunner of what he might do next year.
Newsom questioned the motives behind the Justice Department’s decision to monitor voting in five southern and central California counties, and in Passaic County, N.J. California is holding a referendum Tuesday on Newsom’s effort to redistrict congressional seats, while New Jersey is electing a new governor.
Pritzker also cited the Justice Department’s demand for detailed state voter information.
“That’s never happened in the history of the United States,” he said. “They won’t tell us what they’re doing with them, but it appears that they want to use them in the elections next year, claiming fraud. So, when you put all these things together, it’s not a leap to say that he’s doing this because he wants to affect the 2026 elections in favor of MAGA.”
One goal, The New York Times reported, is to prove previously unsubstantiated claims that large numbers of illegal immigrants have voted illegally. But many states refused to provide the requested data, and the department has sued eight states, including California.
And when Texas sought to determine the extent of illegal voting, its initial results seem to confirm prior conclusions that the numbers are small.
A comparison of the state’s voter registration list with the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service’s database identified only 2,724 noncitizens who were registered to vote, Secretary of State Jane Nelson announced.
Since Texas has 18.6 million registered voters, that means non-citizen registrants constitute about 0.01 of 1%.
The executive order Trump signed in March mandated proof of citizenship for voter registration, banned counting mail-in ballots received after Election Day. even if postmarked by then and gave the federal government a new role in state purging of its registration rolls. The federal courts have blocked enforcement of the citizenship requirement.
But the warnings from Newsom and Pritzker make clear that Democrats will be closely watching Justice Department monitors for further clues to the administration’s long-term intentions.
Carl P. Leubsdorf is the former Washington bureau chief of the Dallas Morning News. Email him at carl.p.leubsdorf@gmail.com.
