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

House Democrats will hold a pair of “shadow hearings” next week on the upcoming midterm elections in California; It’s part of a broader effort by the party to defend state voting systems against mounting criticism and threats of interference from the Trump administration.

Such hearings, like those recently held in Los Angeles on President Trump’s immigration raids, provide Democrats with an opportunity to highlight issues for which their majority Republican counterparts would not schedule more formal hearings in Washington.

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

“The defense of democracy is under attack” and must be defended, Morelle told The Times.

“We will not allow President Trump and House Republicans’ efforts to take over our elections to prevail. We will use every tool in our toolbox, and that includes working with pro-democracy allies in communities across the country,” he said. “I look forward to hearing about the work being done to protect democracy in California as we fight in the field and in Congress.”

Pelosi told The Times that protecting democracy “requires attention, transparency and action” and that the shadow hearings “will bring together front-line voices on election security, voting rights and accountability to ensure that every American’s vote is protected and every institution has the public’s trust.”

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

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

The hearings will be the first to be chaired (at least in part) by Pelosi, 86, who has stepped down from her position as party leader and currently holds no committee duties. He announced in November that he would not seek re-election.

Trump has been claiming for years, without evidence, that US elections were undermined and influenced by widespread voter fraud and that such fraud cost him the 2020 election, which he lost to Joe Biden. He and his personal lawyers argued this issue repeatedly in court but always lost; This was partly because they could provide no evidence to support their claims.

Since taking back the White House last year, Trump has continued to push his false claims, pushing his administration to attack voting systems, especially in unpopular blue states.

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

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

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

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

Trump administration officials and their allies have also expressed concern that they might send immigration agents to polling stations during the midterm elections, refusing to rule out such a move following the mass deployment of such agents to American cities in part to pursue Trump’s mass deportation agenda.

Trump has framed efforts to end mail-in voting and increase voter identification requirements, as he has recently done himself, as “common sense” steps to combat fraud that most Americans agree with. The vast majority of California voters cast their ballots by mail; That includes nearly 90% of the votes cast in last year’s special election on Proposition 50, the state’s mid-decade redistricting measure.

Democrats and many election experts have dismissed Trump’s election claims as baseless, arguing that government-run systems are safe and secure and saying his demands for stricter voter identification regulations would disenfranchise millions of U.S. citizen voters who lack the documents he wants to require, including women who change their names at marriage.

Voting experts say fraudulent votes, including by noncitizens, are rare and there is no evidence that fraud affects U.S. elections.

States including California have joined voting rights organizations in filing lawsuits to block Trump’s various attempts to interfere in state elections; This includes his order last week and a previous order that purported to impose new federal requirements on voter ID and proof of citizenship.

California officials and others have repeatedly stated 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 infringe on the state’s election powers.

Local election officials in California are also preparing for possible election day disruptions from 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 (MALDEF) were scheduled to attend the hearings.