As federal election monitors arrive in California and New Jersey ahead of Tuesday’s elections, Democrats are screaming, “voter intimidation!”
“It’s a preview of things to come, part of the rigging, part of the voter suppression,” California Democrat Gov. Gavin Newsom, in the running for America’s slimiest politician, said last week. “It’s exactly why the National Guard were federalized through Election Day.”
California voters head the the polls to decide the fate of Proposition 50, a Newsom-led redistricting initiative that would give more congressional seats to Democrats and disenfranchise Republican voters. The representative democracy deniers want to jettison the political maps drawn up by an independent commission and replace them with a politically-twisted gerrymander. Remember that when Democrats bloviate about “voter suppression.”
Virginia and New Jersey will hold state elections featuring bruising executive branch races.
“Our State is committed to ensuring a free, fair, and secure election, and we will not allow anyone to interfere with or disrupt our elections,” leftist New Jersey Attorney General Matt Platkin declared after the Department of Justice announced it would deploy monitors in Passaic County, N.J., and at polling sites in five counties in California.
The Democrats’ spin, in the words of Col. Sherman T. Potter, is a bunch of horse hockey. It’s more of the “fascism” prattle from the party that has helped lead a soft coup against a duly elected president for more than eight years.
There’s nothing new about the deployment of federal election monitors. The two buffoons in California and New Jersey certainly didn’t express any concerns last year when President Joe Biden’s Department of Justice announced it would send scores of election monitors into 86 jurisdictions across 26 states — including California and New Jersey.
Leftist “voter rights” groups and their press messengers love federal monitors, just not when they’re sent out to make sure liberal partisan elections officials are playing by the rules.
But New Jersey’s attorney general insists the same actions by President Donald Trump’s DOJ are “highly inappropriate.” Platkin puffed to USA Today that his office would be considering all of its options “to prevent any effort to intimidate voters or interfere with our elections.”
The Jersey Democrat Machine appointee likes to gloss over Passaic County’s history of election integrity failures and election law abuses.
‘Troubled History’
A new report from the Texas Public Policy Foundation should serve as a reminder to the attorney general about “one of the most notorious mail-in ballot fraud scandals in recent memory.” It happened in Paterson, N.J., Passaic County’s seat of government.
“The incident was so serious that a judge threw out the entire election and ordered a new one,” notes the report, “Troubled History, Troubling Choices: Passaic County’s Failed Election Safeguards.
As The Federalist reported at the time, a whopping 19 percent of the mail-in ballots in the special election were found to be fraudulent. The Board of Elections was forced to disqualify nearly 3,200 votes. The fraud was so bad Democrat Gov. Pat Murphy’s attorney general at the time, Gurbir S. Grewal, charged four men with criminal conduct. Grewal left the post in 2021 to serve as Biden’s enforcement director at the Securities Exchange Commission.
The case has dragged on for more than five years. Despite the charges, defendant Alex Mendez was elected Paterson City Council president in the court-ordered second election. He remains on the council. Mendez, his wife, and three others in April were named in a superseding indictment expanding upon the 2020 fraud allegations, Platkin announced earlier this year. The council member’s attorney told the Bergen Record that Mendez may have made some errors in handling mail-in ballots, but “nothing was done to break the law.”
‘Transparency Isn’t Optional’
Last month, the Democratic-controlled Passaic County Board of Elections raised more election integrity red flags when it refused to allow security cameras in ballot storage areas. Election officials in the suburban county, a Democrat stronghold, also refuses to enforce “basic sign-in and sign-out logs” for those with access to mail-in ballots, according to the Republican Party of New Jersey.
That’s why the state GOP asked the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division to send federal election monitors — a most reasonable request given Passaic County’s problematic past.
“In recent years, Passaic County has been home to infamous voter fraud schemes and among the slowest counties to count ballots and certify elections in the entire state,” New Jersey Republican Party Chairman Glenn Paulsen said in a statement.
“When criminals plan to steal something — whether jewels from the Louvre or a New Jersey election — the last thing they want around is a security camera. That seems the likeliest explanation for this month’s decision by the Democratic-controlled Passaic County, NJ, Board of Elections to ban cameras for ballot storage areas in next month’s gubernatorial election,” the New York Post Editorial Board wrote last week.
As the Texas Public Policy Foundation notes, it’s pretty intimidating when elections officials refuse to be transparent.
“Every decision that limits transparency erodes public trust, especially in a state that has already faced serious election controversies,” the report asserts. “If Passaic County officials think New Jerseyans will simply look the other way, they’re mistaken. Transparency isn’t optional — it’s the foundation of election integrity.
‘Political Machine’
Some voters in Hudson County, N.J., southwest of Passaic, say they’d like to see federal election monitors in their county. As The Federalist reported last week, Republicans in Union City and other Hudson County communities have complained to the local and state GOP as well as the Republican National Committee about alleged election law violations in Union City. Sources allege New Jersey Democrat boss Brian Stack and his leftist army of Hudson County campaigners are engaging in everything from electioneering on government property to corrupting election inspectors. Stack is the politically powerful mayor of Union City and a state senator representing the area.
“I like to say Union City is the belly of the beast when it comes to this kind of thing. It’s been going on for years. [Democrats] are so comfortable because they’ve never been held accountable,” Marco Navarro, an Emergency Medical Technician and Republican candidate for New Jersey’s 37th Legislative District, told The Federalist last week in an interview. The seat has not been held by a Republican in more than 50 years.
Leonard Filipowski, an investigative reporter who goes by Leroy Truth on his social media accounts and website, last week documented what appeared to be multiple examples of violations of New Jersey’s laws against electioneering within 100 feet of the polls. Videos show “Team Stack” and other Democrat campaign signs in close proximity to Union City mobile voting trailers.
Another source with a knowledge of the inner workings of the Union City “political machine” alleged local elections are plagued with voter fraud, voter bribes, and Democrat Party interests campaigning on government property and taxpayer time. Election officials in Hudson County and Union City did not return The Federalist’s requests for comment. Stack did not return multiple messages; someone who answered the politician’s cellphone hung up.
The Courier Post last week reported that the DOJ election monitors would be sent to the northern part of New Jersey, “specifically Passaic County.” A DOJ official did not return a Federalist request seeking information on other monitoring sites in northern New Jersey.
RNC spokeswoman Kiersten Pels said the election integrity team is “actively tracking” the situation in Union City “to ensure voters can cast their ballots freely and that election laws are enforced without delay.”
“The RNC takes reports of electioneering seriously and immediately escalated concerns to local officials in Hudson County,” Pels said last week in a statement to The Federalist.
Boots on the Ground
Every vote will be crucial in a tight election.
Democrat Mikie Sherrill, a far-left candidate posing as a moderate, held a razor thin edge — 50.2% to 49.3 % — on Republican candidate Jack Ciattarelli in New Jersey’s nationally-watched governor’s race, according to an AtlasIntel poll of more than 1,600 likely voters.
The RNC announced it was spending hundreds of thousands of dollars more in election integrity efforts in the Garden State in the final days of the election, with thousands of boots on the ground and “new digital tools to churn voter turnout.” RNC officials describe the latter as “a first-of-its-kind” get-out-the-vote platform. VotePro, as the platform is called, is “a completely customizable way to create websites that fit each campaign,” an RNC press release stated.
Committee attorneys also have filed several election integrity lawsuits, including complaints demanding the state and its elections agency turn over voting machine data from the June primary and follow the Open Public Records Act.
Pavel Sokolov, Hudson County GOP State Committeeman, said the party is “aware of” the alleged election law violations in Union City and is “taking every step we can to make sure the election is administered in a fair and legal process.” He said the RNC has been a tremendous partner in that effort.
That effort begins with access and transparency. Federal election monitors will help on that front. As the Texas Public Policy Foundation aptly put it, “Every decision that limits transparency erodes public trust.”
Matt Kittle is a senior elections correspondent for The Federalist. An award-winning investigative reporter and 30-year veteran of print, broadcast, and online journalism, Kittle previously served as the executive director of Empower Wisconsin.
