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

House Democrats will hold “shadow hearings” in California next week on the upcoming midterm elections – part of the party’s larger effort to protect the states’ voting systems from growing criticism and threats of intervention from the Trump administration.

Such hearings, like the one recently held in Los Angeles on President Trump’s immigration crackdown, give Democrats a chance to highlight issues that many of their Republican colleagues won’t hold a formal hearing in Washington.

The hearing – scheduled for Los Angeles on Tuesday and San Francisco on Thursday – will feature testimony from polling and election experts, and will be chaired by Rep. Joseph Morelle of New York, placing a Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee with an eye on the election, and Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco), former speaker of the House.

Morelle, in a statement sent to The Times, said, “The defense of democracy is under attack” and must be defended.

“We will not allow the efforts of President Trump and House Republicans to take over our elections. We will use every tool in our toolbox and that includes working with pro-democracy supporters 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 floor and in Congress.”

Pelosi, in her statement to The Times, said that protecting democracy “requires vigilance, clarity, and action,” and the shadow hearing “will bring together voices on the front lines of election security, voting rights, and accountability to ensure that every American vote is secure and every institution earns public trust.”

“At a time of growing threats to our democratic system, we must strengthen and protect the integrity of our elections to ensure that our government is of the people, for the people,” he said.

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

The hearing will be the first in a long time to be chaired — at least in part — by Pelosi, 86, who has stepped down from the party’s leadership position and currently does not hold any committee assignments. He announced in November that he would not seek re-election.

Trump has alleged for years, without evidence, that American elections are undermined and tampered with by widespread voter fraud, and that such fraud cost him the 2020 election in which he lost to Joe Biden. He and his lawyers have argued many times in court, but they have always lost – in part because they have not been able to produce any evidence to support their claims.

Since retaking the White House last year, Trump has continued to press his baseless allegations, and pressured his administration to attack voting systems — especially in blue states where he was 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 overturned by the courts.

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

In February, Trump said that Republicans should “pick up the vote in at least 15 states,” saying poor turnout in what he called “trick states” was hurting his party. “Republicans should do national voting.”

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

Trump administration officials and allies have also expressed concern that they could send immigrants to the polls during the midterms, in part by refusing to make that decision after large numbers of these workers were sent to American cities to follow Trump’s mass deportation plan.

Trump has touted his efforts to end mail-in voting — which he recently did — and expanded voter identification requirements as “common sense” anti-fraud measures that most Americans agree with. Most California voters voted by mail, including nearly 90% in last year’s special election for Proposition 50, the state’s mid-decade measure.

Democrats and many election experts rejected Trump’s election claims as baseless, defended the federal programs as safe and secure, and said his demands for stricter voter ID laws would exclude millions of U.S. citizen voters who don’t have the kind of documents he wants to approve — including women who have changed their marriage names.

Polling experts say fraudulent ballots, including by non-citizens, are rare, and there is no evidence that fraud is changing US elections.

States including California have joined voting rights groups in denouncing Trump’s efforts to interfere in federal elections, including his executive order last week and an earlier one that imposed new federal requirements on voter identification and proof of citizenship.

California officials and others have repeatedly noted that federal law gives states the right to manage elections as they see fit, and vowed to fight any efforts by the president or his administration to undermine the state’s electoral powers.

Local election officials in California are also bracing for potential Election Day disruptions from the Trump administration.

Scheduled to participate in the hearing were 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.