Justice Department threatens California with legal action over claim of noncitizens on voter rolls

The Justice Department asked California officials to examine names it identified as likely noncitizens who had been sent mail ballots. Officials were told to verify each person’s citizenship, separate ballots whose voters could not be independently confirmed, and stop ballots from being sent to people who had not received them. The request matters because California mails ballots to every registered voter.

The department sent Los Angeles County a password-protected thumb drive containing the names. A letter from acting Deputy U.S. Attorney General Trent McCotter gave California 48 hours to determine whether any citizens appeared on the list. The state secretary of state and Los Angeles County registrar had not immediately commented.

The department warned that failure to meet the deadline could lead to emergency court action. The episode also reflects a larger federal effort focused on noncitizen voting, despite the article’s description of that problem as exceptionally rare. California officials have questioned the reliability of federal data.

A voter roll is the government’s list of registered voters. Election officials use it to determine who may receive ballots and participate in elections. A noncitizen appearing on a roll means the person’s record is listed among eligible voters even though the person is not a U.S. citizen. That does not, by itself, prove the person voted.

The distinction matters in this dispute. The Justice Department said some likely noncitizens had been sent California mail ballots. California mails ballots to all registered voters, so a registration record can lead to a ballot being delivered. The federal government asked officials to check citizenship before ballots were used.

The article describes noncitizen voting as exceptionally rare. It also reports that federal data incorrectly identified people in earlier cases. In Nevada, the government identified 1,500 alleged noncitizen voters, but the state found zero actual registered noncitizens. A flagged record therefore requires verification rather than automatic proof of wrongdoing.

The Justice Department has charged about 90 people for various types of election misconduct so far this year. The article identifies about 50 of them as people allegedly accused of voting as noncitizens. These figures describe criminal charges, not convictions.

The numbers provide scale for the federal government’s campaign to find noncitizens on voter rolls and investigate alleged unlawful voting. They are small compared with the more than 227 million registered voters in the United States during the 2024 presidential election. That comparison helps explain why the article calls the problem exceptionally rare.

The administration has nevertheless made noncitizen voting a priority. It has sought detailed voter information from states and has sued 30 states and the District of Columbia for access to that data. The article says the government has so far lost those information-access cases in court. The charges and lawsuits are separate actions, but both fit the same broader effort.

The Justice Department’s instructions called for local officials to segregate a mail ballot when they could not independently verify the voter’s citizenship. Segregation means separating the ballot from ordinary processing while officials determine whether the voter is eligible. The instruction was designed to prevent a potentially ineligible ballot from moving through the election process before review.

The letter also said officials should not provide a ballot to anyone on the federal list who had not yet received one. California mails ballots to all registered voters, so the federal request covered both ballots already delivered and ballots still awaiting delivery. Officials had 48 hours to review the names and decide whether citizens had been included.

The article does not explain the final handling of a segregated ballot after verification. It says only that the ballot should remain separated until the voter’s status can be determined. If California failed to implement the process, the Justice Department warned it would seek emergency relief in court.

A government database can wrongly flag a citizen when records used for comparison do not match exactly. Names, birth dates, addresses, license records, or partial Social Security numbers can differ because information is outdated, incomplete, misspelled, or recorded differently. A database may then treat a mismatch as evidence of noncitizenship even when the person is a citizen.

The article does not identify the precise technical cause of the errors. It does say the federal effort uses voter details such as dates of birth, addresses, driver’s license numbers, and partial Social Security numbers. Those records are run through a Department of Homeland Security database that has been criticized for inaccurately flagging U.S. citizens.

A Nevada example shows why human review matters. Federal officials identified 1,500 alleged noncitizen voters, but state officials found zero actual registered noncitizens. California Secretary of State Shirley Weber also questioned the reliability and accuracy of federal claims. A database match therefore is not conclusive proof.

When officials receive a report that someone may be ineligible, they normally investigate the record rather than remove it immediately. They compare registration information with authoritative government records, check for identity or data-entry errors, and determine whether the person actually meets voting requirements. Officials may contact the voter or request documentation before taking action.

That process matters because a database match can be wrong. The article gives Nevada as an example: federal officials identified 1,500 alleged noncitizen voters, but the state found zero actual registered noncitizens. California officials also questioned the reliability of federal data. These examples support careful, local verification instead of automatic cancellation.

The supplied excerpt does not describe the full procedure used by Santa Cruz County. It ends after saying Clerk Tricia Webber explained what her office does when an ineligible voter is reported. Therefore, the general process above comes from established election-administration practice, while the article specifically establishes that officials considered the federal 48-hour review deadline unreasonable.

States administer voter-registration systems and may place legal limits on sharing personal information. Those limits can cover records such as dates of birth, addresses, driver’s license numbers, and partial Social Security numbers. Federal investigators may request the information, but a request does not automatically override state privacy rules.

The article says the Justice Department sued 30 states and the District of Columbia to obtain detailed voter data. California was among the states that successfully sued the federal government. Its legal position included the argument that handing over the information would violate state privacy laws. Some Republican-led states did provide the requested information.

The dispute shows the tension between election investigations and data protection. Federal officials have used information from states to compare voter records with a Homeland Security database. That database has been criticized for inaccurately flagging citizens. The article says the Justice Department has so far lost the information-access cases in court, so state privacy protections remain a significant barrier.