DOJ orders California counties to verify suspected noncitizen voters
The Justice Department has sent letters to most California counties demanding that election officials help identify suspected noncitizens on voter rolls and set aside their mail ballots, escalating a legal fight with the state before the midterm elections.
The Justice Department is pressing California's local election offices to help it identify suspected noncitizens on voter rolls, warning of possible legal action if they do not comply. Federal prosecutors sent letters to 57 of the state's 58 counties, according to a letter obtained by NBC News, a move that signals a sharper push by the Trump administration to stop the state from counting ballots from voters the federal government considers likely noncitizens.
The letter sent to San Bernardino County Registrar of Voters Joani Finwall came from the U.S. attorney's office in Los Angeles. First Assistant U.S. Attorney Bilal Essayli said his office was providing a list of 1,133 names of what it called "likely aliens" and asked the county to commit within 48 hours to working with the Justice Department and the Department of Homeland Security to determine who on the list is a citizen. Essayli also warned that continuing to send vote-by-mail ballots to those on the list, or tabulating ballots cast by them, carries legal implications until citizenship is verified. For voters whose status cannot be confirmed, he asked counties to segregate their ballots.
The demands build on an earlier confrontation. On Oct. 14, acting Deputy Attorney General R. Trent McCotter sent letters to California Secretary of State Shirley Weber and Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder Dean Logan, enclosing a password-protected thumb drive with a list of individuals the federal government "believes are likely noncitizens who were sent a vote-by-mail ballot" for the 2026 election. McCotter asked officials to "segregate — not cancel" those voters' ballots until their citizenship was determined. The Justice Department then sued California, accusing the state of failing to review the list and asking a court to block the state from tabulating ballots from the roughly 20,000 people it describes as likely noncitizens. Federal prosecutors said California "made no serious effort" to work collaboratively on the matter.
California officials have rejected that account. Secretary of State Shirley Weber wrote to McCotter that "the extraordinary measures you demand are contrary to both federal and state law." Los Angeles County's assistant county counsel, Peter Bollinger, told the department that the county was not authorized to take the actions requested under federal and state law. Officials have also noted that the Justice Department has not confirmed that the voters on the list are noncitizens.
Court filings have added further questions about the evidence. In a sworn declaration filed Oct. 20, Aman Bhullar, an assistant registrar responsible for Los Angeles County's election technology systems, described a preliminary review of 200 records from the list of more than 20,000 individuals. The review found that 71.2 percent had never voted in previous elections, 42.9 percent had canceled registration records, and 42.4 percent had active registrations. Bhullar warned that carrying out the request to set aside ballots could interfere with voting operations less than two weeks before Election Day. Election law professor Jessica Levinson of Loyola Law School said that California had asked the federal government to show its work and had received little response for a time.
The dispute is part of a wider campaign. The Justice Department has separately charged 28 individuals accused of illegally registering to vote and, in some cases, casting ballots. Earlier, it sued Orange County Registrar Robert Page for refusing to provide records on removed noncitizen registrants, a suit that did not allege any noncitizen had voted in the county. Data cited by CBS News indicates that illegal voting by people who are not U.S. citizens is rare, difficult to prove, and has not been shown to change the outcome of races.
The Trump administration has made the pursuit of noncitizen voters a priority in the run-up to the midterms, and the California fight is likely to test how far federal authorities can direct how states and counties administer elections during voting already underway.
6
