California Voters Fear Federal Interference and Election Meddling, New Poll Shows

On the eve of the midterm elections, nearly two-thirds of California voters are worried that the federal government may try to stop the counting of votes, according to a new poll that captures an extraordinary level of anxiety about election integrity in the Golden State, The Times reported. The survey, conducted by the UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies and co-sponsored by the Los Angeles Times, found that 63% of registered voters fear the Trump administration could attempt to halt vote tabulation in California and other states in the days following Tuesday’s election.

That fear lands amid an aggressive push by the Justice Department to challenge state voting processes, including a lawsuit demanding California set aside roughly 20,000 ballots the federal government flagged as potentially belonging to noncitizens. Federal prosecutors have threatened criminal action against elections officials who refuse to comply, and the administration escalated the fight over the weekend by asking the Supreme Court to intervene—a request the justices rejected on Monday. The timing matters: with control of the U.S. House potentially hanging on a handful of California congressional races, any disruption to the state’s famously slow vote count could have national consequences.

The Justice Department’s Pressure Campaign

The poll’s findings reflect a month of escalating tension between Sacramento and Washington. Gov. Gavin Newsom sent a letter last week to U.S. District Court judges across California warning of potential election interference, urging them not to comply if federal agents seek search warrants to seize ballots before results are certified. In the letter, posted on the Governor’s official website, Newsom cited the president’s history of weaponizing the Justice Department for partisan ends and raised “legitimate concerns about further attempts to disenfranchise voters and undermine election integrity.”

Concerns have also mounted over the presence of immigration agents near voting centers and conducting door-to-door checks to identify alleged voter fraud. While recent court rulings have dealt setbacks to the administration’s efforts to intervene in California’s voting process, the poll shows distress remains high. Overall, 49% of voters said they are not confident the state’s election will be free of federal interference.

Taken together, both developments ought to trigger warnings about risks to democracy in California, according to Matt Barreto, director of the UCLA Voting Rights Project. Voters are reflecting the reality. Over the last month, the president and the Department of Justice have been trying to directly meddle in and seize control of California elections, and voters recognize this.

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A Stark Partisan and Racial Divide

The anxiety is not evenly distributed. Registered Democrats outnumber Republicans by nearly 2 to 1 in California, and the poll shows that partisan gap mirrored in election fears. While 58% of Democrats are not confident the election will be free of federal interference, just 27% of Republicans feel the same way. The gap is even wider on the specific question of a halted vote count: 85% of Democrats worry about that scenario, compared with 22% of Republicans. A majority of voters with no party affiliation also expressed fears of interference.

The racial breakdown adds another layer. Sixty-four percent of Black voters and 54% of Latino voters said they are not confident the election will be free of federal interference, compared with 44% of white non-Hispanic voters. Barreto noted that while voters of color tend to lean Democratic, historic efforts to disenfranchise minorities likely contribute to this disparity as well, pointing to voter suppression efforts from Reconstruction through the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and more recent accusations targeting Latino Californians as noncitizens voting illegally.

Ballot Measure Fatigue Compounds the Unease

The poll also captured deep frustration with California’s ballot proposition system, which this year features 14 statewide measures including new taxes on billionaires and cancer research funding. Eighty-two percent of likely voters said the propositions were worded in ways that made them hard to understand, and an equal percentage agreed that special interest groups have too much influence over which measures reach the ballot. Sixty-two percent felt there were too many propositions on the ballot altogether.

According to Eric Schickler, co-director of the UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies, the initiative serves as a channel for voters when special interest groups cause legislators to ignore their worries. But now most voters believe the initiative process is itself too beholden to special interests.

Schickler described the current level of alarm over election integrity as without precedent in modern American history, comparing it only to the late 19th century Reconstruction era when widespread accusations of voter suppression in the South and illegal voting in the North created a crisis of legitimacy.

Schickler said that nothing like this has occurred in the United States for more than a hundred years, making the current situation particularly remarkable for a modern, enduring democracy.

The survey of 2,787 registered voters was conducted from Oct. 19 to 25 in English and Spanish, with an overall margin of error of plus or minus 2.5 percentage points. For likely voters, the margin of error is about 3 percentage points. Schickler’s highest concern about any federal effort to stop California’s vote count centers on congressional races, a handful of which could play a pivotal role in deciding which party takes control of the U.S. House of Representatives. Still, with the state taking days or weeks to finish counting due to its large population and high volume of mail ballots—a process Trump has repeatedly criticized—the potential for conflict remains acute as voters head to the polls.