House Democrats to hold California ‘shadow hearings’ on midterm election security

House Democrats will hold two “parallel hearings” in California next week on the upcoming midterm elections – part of a broader party effort to defend state election systems against growing criticism and threats of intervention from the Trump administration.

Such hearings, similar to those recently held in Los Angeles on President Trump’s immigration raids, offer Democrats an opportunity to highlight issues that their majority Republican counterparts will not schedule in more formal hearings in Washington.

The hearings — scheduled in Los Angeles on Tuesday and San Francisco on Thursday — will include testimony from experts on voting and elections and will be led by Rep. Joseph Morelle of New York, the ranking Democrat on the House Administration Committee that oversees elections, and Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco), the former House speaker.

Morelle, in a statement to the Times, said: “The defenses of democracy are under attack” and must be defended.

“We will not allow the efforts of President Trump and House Republicans to take control of our elections to prevail. We will use every tool at our disposal, including working with our pro-democracy allies in communities across the country,” he said. “I look forward to hearing about the work being done in California to protect democracy as we fight on the ground and in Congress.”

Pelosi, in her own statement to the Times, said protecting democracy “requires vigilance, transparency and action,” and that the parallel hearings “will bring together the voices on the front lines of election security, voting rights and accountability to ensure that every American’s vote is protected and every institution earns the public’s trust.”

“At a time of widespread threats to our democratic system, we must strengthen and defend the integrity of our elections to reaffirm that our government is of, by and for the people,” she said.

Rep. Pete Aguilar (D-Redlands), chairman of the Democratic Caucus, and other California Democrats are also expected to attend. Republican members of Congress should not be present.

The hearings will be the first in a long time to be led — at least in part — by Pelosi, 86, who gave up her post as party leader and currently holds no committee position. She announced in November that she would not run again.

Trump has claimed for years, without evidence, that the US elections were undermined and influenced by widespread voter fraud, and that this fraud cost him the 2020 election which he lost to Joe Biden. He and his personal lawyers argued this repeatedly in court, but always lost – in part because they could never produce any evidence to support their claims.

Since taking over the White House last year, Trump has continued to push his baseless claims and pushed his administration to attack voting systems — particularly in blue states where he is unpopular.

In September, Trump loyalists at the Justice Department sued California and other states over their voter rolls and other sensitive voter information, but were rebuffed by the courts.

In January, the FBI raided and seized 2020 election records from an election office in Fulton County, Georgia, that was the subject of Trump’s 2020 election fraud allegations.

In February, Trump said Republicans should “take over voting in at least 15 places,” alleging that voting irregularities in what he called “crooked states” were hurting his party. “Republicans should nationalize the vote. »

This week, Trump issued an executive order meant to give federal agencies control over the U.S. Postal Service’s processing of ballots.

Trump administration officials and its allies have also raised concerns about sending immigration agents to polling places in the midterms, in part refusing to rule out such a move following the mass deployment of such agents in U.S. cities to continue Trump’s mass deportation agenda.

Trump has framed his efforts to end mail-in voting — something he did recently himself — and increase voter ID requirements as “common sense” measures to combat fraud that most Americans agree with. A large majority of California voters cast absentee ballots, including nearly 90% in last year’s special election on Proposition 50, the state’s mid-decade redistricting measure.

Democrats and many election experts have rejected Trump’s election claims as baseless, defended state-run systems as safe and secure, and said his demands for stricter voter ID regulations would disenfranchise millions of U.S. citizen voters who lack the type of documentation he wants to require — including women who changed their names upon marriage.

Voting experts say fraudulent votes, including those by non-citizens, are rare and there is no evidence that fraud can swing U.S. elections.

States including California have joined voting rights organizations in filing lawsuits aimed at blocking Trump’s various attempts to interfere in state-run elections, including his order last week and an earlier one purporting to impose new federal requirements for voter ID and proof of citizenship.

California officials and others have repeatedly emphasized that federal law gives states the right to administer elections as they see fit, and have vowed to fight any attempt by the president or his administration to encroach on states’ electoral powers.

Local elections officials in California are also preparing for possible Election Day disruptions due to the Trump administration.

Experts from the UCLA Voting Rights Project, Loyola Law School, the League of Women Voters of California, Common Cause California and the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, or MALDEF, were scheduled to participate in the hearings.