The Trump administration has already declared they’re sending election monitors to California for next week’s Prop 50 vote. But the Gavin Newsom administration just announced they’ll have their own monitors to monitor Trump’s monitors.

We are just about a week out from the November 4 California vote on Prop 50, which would redraw California’s congressional districts in hopes of blunting President Trump’s notorious Texas redistricting. Though there is not much suspense around Prop 50, which is up by 20 percentage points in the polls, and will almost certainty be declared a landslide victory for Governor Newsom’s effort about one minute after the polls close next Tuesday at 8 pm PT.      

Though there was suddenly some controversy around Prop 50 at the end of last week, when Trump’s Justice Department declared they would send election monitors to California polling places for that election, because Trump still genuinely believes his 2020 election conspiracy theories involving Chinese bamboo, evil corrupt voting machines, and whatever else Mike Lindell told him at Four Seasons Total Landscaping.

But not to be outdone, California Attorney General Rob Bonta announced Monday that he would bring in state election monitors to monitor Trump’s federal election monitors.

“They’re not going to be allowed to interfere in ways that the law prohibits,” Bonta said during a news conference Monday. “We cannot be naive. The Republican Party asked for the US DOJ to come in.”

Bonta’s assessment there does check out. The Associated Press reported last week that the California Republican Party requested the federal election monitors.

Additionally, Bonta said Trump is preparing to claim this election was rigged. “He is laying the groundwork. He is socializing an idea that is very dangerous,” Bonta added in the press conference. “All indications, all arrows show that this is a tee up for something more dangerous in the 2026 midterms — and maybe beyond.”

Bay Area Lawyer and now-assistant attorney general for Justice Department's Civil Rights Division Harmeet Dhillon scoffed at the claim. “The @TheJusticeDept under Democrat administrations has sent in federal election observers for decades, and not once did we hear that this was voter intimidation from states such as California,” she tweeted Friday. “Do you really want to go there? Isn’t transparency a good thing?”

The irony here is that next Tuesday's election is going to have dismal, absolutely microscopic turnout. Which raises the possibility that some California polling places will have more election monitors than actual people voting there.

Related: Trump Administration Declares It’s Sending ‘Election Monitors’ to California for November 4 Election [SFist]

Image: SANTA ANA, CALIFORNIA - OCTOBER 19: Election workers process mail-in ballots as a monitor displays a livestream of the process at the Orange County Registrar of Voters on October 19, 2020 in Santa Ana, California. California Secretary of State Alex Padilla said the state has received about ten times as many ballots this year than at the same stage in the 2016 election. For the first time in state history, all registered California voters were sent a vote by mail ballot in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. (Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images)