Justice Department Sues California Over 20,000 Alleged Noncitizen Voters Weeks Before the Midterms

The Justice Department sued California on Thursday, claiming the federal government has identified more than 20,000 noncitizens who are unlawfully registered to vote in the state. The complaint, filed in U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, asks a judge to stop the state from tabulating mail-in ballots from likely noncitizens in the upcoming federal election until each voter's citizenship can be determined.

The lawsuit accuses California of failing to work with federal officials to correct its voter rolls. The complaint says the government asked the state to collaborate on identifying noncitizens who are registered, and that California made no serious effort to do so.

The legal filing followed a tense week of letters. Acting Deputy Attorney General Trent McCotter wrote to counties, including Los Angeles, telling them to review a list of suspected noncitizens who allegedly received mail-in ballots for the midterms. In his letter to the Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk, McCotter enclosed a password-protected thumb drive holding names compiled by the Department of Homeland Security. He gave the county 48 hours to review them.

Los Angeles County declined. Registrar-Recorder Dean Logan said the county would not examine the thumb drive because doing so would conflict with established data privacy and information security protocols, and because the device was not a secure medium. Secretary of State Shirley Weber said the Justice Department never provided the list of names, and she called its claim that California has 190,000 noncitizens on its voter rolls "unsubstantiated." Her office said that because of the pending litigation it had no further comment and pointed reporters to its news release and to Weber's letter to McCotter.

Attorney General Todd Blanche defended the suit in a statement. "State-facilitated voter fraud is unacceptable in the United States of America," he said, adding that if California is found responsible in court, it would have seriously undermined confidence in the electoral system.

The California case is part of a larger campaign. The department's Civil Rights Division has filed 31 lawsuits seeking unredacted copies of states' voter rolls. It says it wants clean voter lists, but it has also acknowledged that it intends to share the data with the Department of Homeland Security so the lists can be screened for noncitizens. In July, Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon sent letters to all 50 states threatening criminal action if they knowingly left noncitizens on their rolls.

The record in court so far has not favored the government. According to CBS News, the department has lost 26 of those voter-roll cases and has not won any to date. The department has also used publicly available voter lists and other investigative methods to try to find registered noncitizens.

With ballots already going out, California now faces a federal demand that could reach into the counting of mail votes in the nation's most populous state. The court has not yet ruled on the request.