NYT:

When the Justice Department announced a week and half ago that it would send monitors to watch California’s elections, it didn’t say who exactly would be doing the monitoring.

For Orange County, a populous and ethnically diverse area south of Los Angeles, the administration tapped Michael Gates, a lawyer with a history of questioning the county’s voting procedures.

For years, Mr. Gates worked as the city attorney for the Orange County community of Huntington Beach, where in 2024 he helped pass the first local voter identification law in the state. When the California attorney general and secretary of state sued, saying that the city’s law conflicted with state election laws, Mr. Gates defended the city in court.

In February, Mr. Gates was appointed deputy assistant attorney ge

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