DOJ sues California over 20,000 alleged noncitizen voters

The U.S. Justice Department sued California on Thursday, Oct. 15, asking a federal judge to bar the state from counting mail-in ballots from about 20,000 voters the government says are likely noncitizens, less than three weeks before the Nov. 3 midterm election.

California has more than 23 million registered voters, and voting is already under way. State officials say the Justice Department has offered no evidence for its list, and the case is developing.

The lawsuit says the state failed to meet a 48-hour deadline to review a password-protected thumb drive of names that the department delivered to Los Angeles County on Tuesday, Al Jazeera and the Associated Press reported. The filing says California “made no serious effort” to work with federal officials to identify noncitizen registrants and asks the court to stop the state from “presently tabulating vote by-mail ballots from likely noncitizens.” The ballots would stay uncounted until each voter’s citizenship is confirmed.

The defendants include Secretary of State Shirley Weber and Los Angeles County Registrar Dean Logan. A letter from acting Deputy Attorney General Trent McCotter had asked the state to tell local officials to set aside the mail ballots of voters whose citizenship could not be verified, and to withhold ballots from listed voters who had not yet received one. We have not read the complaint itself, and the reports reviewed do not name the statute behind it.

Bill Essayli, the first assistant U.S. attorney for the Central District of California, defended the suit. “This is not political or controversial,” he said, according to the AP.

Weber sent a three-page letter saying the lists went to local officials rather than her office, that no evidence supports the claim and that California’s elections comply fully with federal law. She said the department was “demanding unprecedented measures that threaten thousands of Californians’ right to vote” and called the situation “an emergency of the DOJ’s creation.”

Logan said his office cannot withhold or refuse to count ballots “based solely on unverified allegations.” He said he did not consider the thumb drive a secure medium, adding that the password was written “on a sticky note.”

Attorney General Rob Bonta said state officials will not carry out the requests to withhold ballots. Governor Gavin Newsom called the suit a “sad, desperate attempt” to “suppress California voters.”

The number has moved. Over the summer, the Department of Homeland Security claimed California had 190,000 noncitizens on its rolls, and the count later fell to 20,000, the AP reported. Bonta asked what happened to the difference, saying: “They just got those wrong.” Al Jazeera reported that the department first said it suspected “thousands” of noncitizen voters and the lawsuit now says “tens of thousands.”

Weber pointed to Nevada, where about 16,000 people were initially flagged and the state found all of them were U.S. citizens, the AP reported. David Becker, an election law expert, called the lawsuit “fairly frivolous” and said it raises questions about whether its purpose is to set up false claims about elections.

The case follows a run of court fights over voter rolls. A federal judge in Florida ruled on Oct. 2 that a federal law criminalizing noncitizen voting is unconstitutional, reasoning that states set voter qualifications, Al Jazeera reported. Earlier this month, another federal judge ruled the department unlawfully sought state voter rolls to check against the federal SAVE immigration database. Al Jazeera reported the department has at least 45 such cases pending. Our earlier report on an immigration probe that drew on tens of millions of voter records covers related ground.

The AP reported that the department has charged about 90 people with election-related misconduct this year, 50 of them for allegedly voting as noncitizens. President Donald Trump has repeatedly claimed that noncitizens cast large numbers of ballots in Democratic-led states, and state officials say the problem is negligible.

Neither report says when a judge will hear the case. The central question is whether the court will order California to hold back ballots before the Nov. 3 election.

Via Al Jazeera and the Associated Press.

If you find reporting like this useful, consider supporting Canada News Media, an independent Canadian newsroom with no corporate parent.