The Brief

Survivors of the deadly Los Angeles County fires, some of whom have been unable to rebuild because their insurance claims have been delayed or denied, are calling for California Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara to resign.

Lara, a former state lawmaker, has one year left in his second term.

A recent New York Times article detailing loopholes the insurance industry could exploit in Lara’s plan to try to improve California insurance availability was the last straw, fire survivors said. They said it proved Lara has helped the insurance industry more than he has helped policyholders.

Lara and others said his plan, which officially rolled out just days before the L.A.-area fires in January, is in its early stages and will take time to work.

Jill Spivack, a State Farm policyholder whose home burned in the Palisades Fire, said during a press conference Thursday that she has been unable to rebuild.

“We feel alone, we feel forgotten,” she said. She implored Gov. Gavin Newsom to replace Lara. “Californians deserve an insurance commissioner that protects families, not the insurers doing harm,” Spivack said.

Lara — who also faces accusations of improper spending of taxpayer dollars on travel — told CalMatters in an interview that he has no plans to resign.

“I understand the anger [of fire victims],” Lara said. “I’m frustrated with the pace of recovery that involves multiple agencies, multiple levels of government.”

He mentioned the actions he has taken in response, which include the Insurance Department’s June launch of a formal investigation into State Farm over its handling of claims from the L.A.-area fires; a legal action against the FAIR Plan, the state’s fire insurer of last resort; and a bulletin requiring insurance companies to fully investigate and pay smoke damage claims.

Lara’s efforts aren’t helping survivors quickly enough, some of them say. On a website the group recently launched calling for Lara’s resignation, the Eaton Fire Survivors Network links to surveys that say 70% of policyholders face delays and denials, and that 61% expect to lose housing coverage within months. They want the investigations sped up. They want Lara to pause approvals of rate increases in the meantime.

Why one survivor wants Lara out

Andrew Wessels is still waiting to move back into his Altadena home, which did not burn down but was damaged. He first spoke with CalMatters in May, as he was battling State Farm over getting his home tested for toxins because he did not want to move his two children back into a potentially unhealthy environment.

He told CalMatters on Friday that he is still waiting for more tests the insurer ordered as it decides what it wants to pay for. He expects to have to wait until next year before he and his family can actually rebuild. But he feels lucky that he, his wife and kids found semi-permanent housing after shuffling among Airbnbs since the fire. They are now three months into an 18-month lease that State Farm is paying for, and he’s breathing a little easier because he’s “not boxing up things every few weeks.”

He is joining the call for Lara’s resignation. He said the state’s insurance department recently closed his complaint about State Farm’s handling of his claims based on the company’s word alone — without asking him first.

“Recent information provided by the insurer states that the matter you originally brought to our attention is currently in stable condition,” the department’s Oct. 8 letter states.

“It was particularly concerning that it was closed without talking to me,” Wessels said. “They’re supposed to represent me. I think it speaks to who the Department of Insurance actually serves.”

He appealed and asked a couple of his state lawmakers’ staff to contact the department on his behalf, and it reopened his complaint.

“It was also concerning that ‘if State Farm says it, it must be true,’ since the department is investigating (the insurer) for illegal practices,” Wessels added. That proves a change is needed, he said.

Newsom spokesperson Tara Gallegos and the governor’s office did not return repeated requests for comment about the calls for the governor to replace Lara.

Nicole Ganley, a spokesperson for the American Property Casualty Insurance Association, said the industry group would have no comment on the effort to oust Lara. She pointed to a letter to the editor the group sent to the New York Times, which took issue with the story about insurers reportedly exploiting loopholes in the commissioner’s new regulations by avoiding writing policies in certain areas, then turning around to request to raise their premiums anyway.

“The reforms are recent, and their impact is still unfolding,” the letter says in part. “Suggesting failure at this stage misrepresents the facts and risks undermining public confidence in a strategy designed to stabilize coverage in high-risk areas.”

‘No magic wand’ for insurance crisis

Carmen Balber, executive director of Consumer Watchdog, the Los Angeles-based nonprofit organization that is often at odds with Lara, was also at the press conference. Throughout his tenure, her organization has questioned his insurance ties, beginning in 2019 when Lara received and returned campaign contributions from the industry. He ran for office pledging not to take money from companies he’d regulate.

The organization is also the main intervenor in insurance rate reviews, meaning it often submits challenges to insurers’ proposed rate increases and changes. On Nov. 20, a public hearing is scheduled to discuss Lara’s proposed changes to the intervenor process, which Consumer Watchdog has characterized as the commissioner’s revenge.

“What we’ve seen happen over the past couple of years is things getting worse for consumers, not better,” Balber told CalMatters ahead of the press conference. “We need someone new in charge who will hold the industry accountable to its promises.”

But Amy Bach, executive director of San Francisco-based consumer advocacy group United Policyholders, said she is “sorry to see energy being expended in this direction.”

She said there are legal, regulatory and other efforts underway to try to improve the state’s home insurance market, and that bringing in a different commissioner isn’t likely to speed things up. “There is no magic wand that will solve the insurance challenges that are plaguing L.A. wildfire survivors and causing premiums to rise untenably across the state,” Bach said.

Robert Herrell, a former deputy insurance commissioner under Lara’s predecessor, also used the magic-wand analogy. As climate disasters and risks proliferate, there is no easy fix to what ails property insurance in this state, nation and the rest of the world, he said.

Yet he said survivors need a strong commissioner who stands up to the insurance industry. “This is not that commissioner,” said Herrell, who is now executive director of the nonprofit advocacy group Consumer Federation of California. “Just because he says that every time he takes action it’s for the consumers doesn’t make it true.”

Bach said Lara has had to find a way to balance competing interests: “No prior commissioner faced the marketplace conditions he’s faced, so it’s hard to say whether a heavier-handed approach would have worked any better than what he’s trying to achieve.”

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.

President Donald Trump’s administration appealed to the Supreme Court on Monday in its push to sideline thousands of disputed California mail ballots the day before the pivotal midterm elections.

The emergency appeal came after an appeals court rejected the request to set aside some 20,000 ballots from people the federal government suspects may not be citizens.

The federal government says those ballots should not be counted until the voters’ status can be verified. California officials say the list is highly unreliable and likely includes many people who are U.S. citizens.

The Republican Trump administration has prioritized identifying noncitizen voters this year, despite them being rare.

A district court judge forcefully denied the Justice Department’s request and warned that the demand could disenfranchise citizens in the Nov. 3 midterm elections to determine control of Congress.

The Justice Department asked the high court for a “limited injunction” that would direct California to “stop commingling suspected illegal ballots with legal ones” while the case continues to play out.

Voting has been underway in California, a largely Democratic state, since early October. All of the state’s roughly 23 million registered voters are mailed a ballot. Hundreds of thousands of ballots have already been processed.

Lower courts have sided with the state, with a district judge warning that segregating ballots would “wreak havoc” on the midterm elections and erode trust in the democratic process.

“If the Executive can discount votes and threaten an ongoing election due to unproven allegations, then our democracy is in danger,” U.S. District Judge David O. Carter wrote.

The Justice Department has sought to move the case along quickly, unsuccessfully asking an appeals court to intervene early.

The Trump administration has racked up a series of wins in emergency appeals before the Supreme Court, but the justices previously rejected the president’s push to restrict mail ballots ahead of the midterms.

The union that represents 29,000 faculty members is asking its members to authorize a strike after negotiations with California State University reached an impasse. Members have till November 19 to vote.

The California Faculty Association last went on strike in January 2024.

Now they are back at the bargaining table. While the union seeks pay raises, members say this negotiation is also about all the ways higher education has changed since they won their last contract: That includes provisions guaranteeing academic freedom — in the face of pressure from the Trump administration over DEI and and artificial intelligence guardrails.

“This is the boldest proposal we've had as a bargaining team, as a union,” said Elaine Villanueva Bernal, who teaches chemistry at Cal State Long Beach and also serves on the bargaining team.

She and other members of the union rallied this past week in support of the authorization vote, one of many such demonstrations across the state.

They said the union is fighting for members to decide whether or not to use artificial intelligence and to “not to be replaced with AI, for our work not to be evaluated by AI.”

Even if the vote passes, that doesn’t mean a strike will happen; contract talks can still continue.

Elaine Villanueva Bernal teaches chemistry at Cal State Long Beach and serves on the CFA bargaining team.

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In an emailed statement, Amy Bentley-Smith, a spokesperson for the university system, said CSU has reached agreements with four other unions “demonstrating that meaningful agreements can be achieved through collective bargaining.”

“We believe that continued negotiations, rather than a strike, offer the best path toward reaching a fair and sustainable agreement with CFA. Our priority remains supporting our faculty, serving our students and avoiding unnecessary disruption to their education,” she said.

Why is another strike possible?

In January 2024, faculty members went on strike across the state, disrupting classes for around 500,000 students. The strike lasted one day — to the disbelief of many union members.

“The last contract sucked. The union caved after one day. We had all the momentum of faculty here and a lot of support to keep the strike going,” said Helen Hood Scheer, a cinematic arts professor at Cal State Long Beach. “However, I will say that at some of the other CSUs that are not as healthy as we are, I think some other people felt like it was a good contract.”

Helen Hood Scheer and her friend came out to a rally in Cal State Long Beach to signal their support for a strike authorization vote after negotiations between the California Faculty Association and CSU reached an impasse.

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She said she drove over an hour on a day she does not have to teach to be on campus for the rally to “let the chancellor know that we’re serious.” Hood Scheer said some professors are living below the poverty line, while CSU Chancellor Mildred Garcia makes close to $1 million annually.

 Lily Housepeters, an associate professor of geography at Cal State Long Beach and vice president of the CFA Long Beach chapter, said the bargaining team has made changes because some members were ready to strike longer and were disappointed with some of the contract gains.

“This time around, we have a much more inclusive bargaining team. We've expanded our bargaining team. We have members of our bargaining team from every single campus,” she said.

The impact of the Trump administration on faculty

The landscape of higher education has also changed since the last contract.

Contract negotiations have centered federal funding cuts to research and to grants that sought to increase representation of historically excluded groups on campus.

“ We should be able to teach the classes that we need to teach, that we want to teach, that students actually demand, without government or political interference,” said Melissa Hidalgo, a lecturer in women’s, gender and sexuality studies at Cal State Long Beach. “When your federal government tries to tell you that certain subjects are off the table now because they don't like them, when you can't talk about things like gender and race anymore, when we start to have directives coming from the top down, this is how we know that our, our academic freedom is under attack.”

CFA members and supporters rally in support of a strike authorization vote after negotiations between the union and CSU reached an impasse.

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Deborah Ham, a retired education professor, came out to support the rally on Tuesday at CSU Long Beach. As someone who has taught for over 35 years, Ham said, the attacks on education are nothing like she’s seen before.

“I feel an attack on our work, on our way of life, on our way of believing, on our humanity, and it's very, very painful. As someone who taught children and English as a second language to immigrants, to see the attack on everyone is just Nazism,” she said. “It just is frightening to me, and I don't like seeing this in my community. And so that's another reason why I am here, to protect our community.”

Ronald Loewe, a professor of anthropology said academic freedom protections are important because he has seen pushback on faculty and students who have spoken out in support of Palestinian rights.

At rallies including the one on campus on Tuesday, faculty members use amplified sound and it’s something that has been done for years, he said. But, during a protest in support of Palestinian rights,  ”five faculty members were sanctioned for using amplified sound. There's been a lot of attempts to kind of pick on faculty members and students who've spoken out in favor of Palestine or have been critical of Israel.”

A spokesperson for Cal State Long Beach told LAist no faculty member has been disciplined for taking part in actions related to Palestinian advocacy.

AI has changed contract negotiations

Loewe also wants to see strong artificial intelligence guardrails in the new contract.

“I think that the university has really excluded us from having kind of any input or any say in the development of artificial intelligence on campus. It's affecting our teaching, it's affecting student learning, and it's making people stupid,” he said.

The CSU system recently renewed a controversial contract with OpenAI that costs $13 million annually, a decision Loewe and Housepeters say faculty were not consulted on.

 ”We also see lots of other spending throughout the CSU that we would argue is wasteful or is not in priority with faculty working conditions, which are student learning conditions,” Housepeters said.

During the recent heat waves that pummeled Southern California, for instance, she said some faculty had to work in offices without air conditioning where temperatures hit over 90 degrees.

The union, Housepeters said, is also fighting for improved working conditions and reducing workload for some faculty members. She said the union wants “ a transformational contract where tenure-track faculty would receive more time for research, and our lecturer faculty would receive more time for service because currently all of their service is uncompensated.”

Some students are joining the rallies

Joining the faculty members in support of their fight for a new contract were students Christina Henry and Zack Medway.

Henry, who is studying history, said she hoped to become a professor one day.

“I think it's important that our professors get a living wage. They do so much to set us up for our future careers. Their career should be rewarding for them as well,” she said.

“ If we truly want to value education as a country,” said Medway, a graduate student, “we need to honor and respect the people who do the work and the people who do the learning, and know that learning is uncomfortable and necessary.”

Consumers who buy Affordable Care Act health insurance are going to see changes both big and small as open enrollment for 2027 coverage kicks off. These include premium increases, possible additional identity checks, potential delays in working with a broker and new limits on which immigrants can get subsidies.

Shoppers need to plan accordingly.

Open enrollment starts Nov. 1 in most states. Idaho, Connecticut, and Massachusetts started earlier, and some states have been allowing "window shopping" to check premium rates.

A continued decline in overall enrollment is expected, mainly because of the expiration of enhanced subsidies at the end of 2025. Policy experts say the end of those subsidies led millions to drop or lose coverage through the first few months of this year.

But the Trump administration sees victory in the falling enrollment, crediting its various efforts to reduce fraud, including the August cancellation of policies covering 760,000 enrollees suspected to be improperly signed up. A small number of those enrollees have regained coverage.

Have your ID ready

One of the biggest changes for people shopping for their 2027 coverage will be increased scrutiny of both consumers and agents. The requirements are aimed at thwarting fraud or improper enrollments. For consumers, it could slow the enrollment process.

The new rules, outlined by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, affect only consumers using agents or brokers to help them enroll through the federal marketplace, which serves 29 states. They do not apply to state-based exchanges, which have their own rules and have in most cases been more successful at preventing fraudulent sign-ups.

For starters, all consumers using an agent in the federal marketplace will need to get a one-time confirmation code or link to authorize a specific agent to enroll them or make changes on their behalf. It will be sent to consumers by text message, email or an automated phone call from one of the private enrollment platforms used by their agent. Returning consumers who have incorrect or outdated contact information will first need to call the federal marketplace themselves or submit an application online to update it.

Additionally, consumers and policyholders deemed "high-risk" must verify their own identity before authorizing an agent. CMS defines as "high-risk" first-time applicants or those with existing coverage whose applications involve a change of state, as well as consumers working with a new or different agent or with a monthly premium payment of $30 or less.

Joshua Brooker, who oversees an insurance agency in Pennsylvania, said CMS appears to have selected people in those groups for greater scrutiny because "someone who is moving to a new state or switching brokers — that could be a broker trying to impersonate a consumer."

The $30-a-month cutoff may be tied to concerns that plans with no or low monthly premiums are easier for bad agents to target for unauthorized enrollments because the policyholder may never get a bill. Some rogue agents even pay the low monthly amount themselves and still make a profit from the commission, Brooker said.

The broad nature of the new rules, though, has Brooker concerned "that up to 1 in 5 consumers is going to have to do extra identity proofing" and may just give up and not get insured.

Consumers designated high-risk must prove their identity through a CMS-approved third party such as credit company Experian, which generally asks questions only the consumer should be able to answer. People who fail this test may be asked to call Experian's help desk or submit their applications themselves by creating a healthcare.gov account, which requires them to upload identification such as a driver's license, a passport, immigration papers or another form of ID.

"Some people may have trouble not because they're not real, but because they don't have a credit file, or have moved, or have changed names," said Stacey Pogue, a senior research fellow at the Center on Health Insurance Reforms at Georgetown University.

She said the changes might "be an appropriate response by CMS that targets fraudulent enrollments but might also create extra hurdles."

There may be fewer brokers

CMS in September issued a rule that places a moratorium on brokers new to offering ACA coverage. Agents not registered with the federal marketplace in 2026 will not be allowed to assist with enrollments for 2027 until February at the earliest, past the end of open enrollment season.

CMS said it took this step because a disproportionate number of "significant compliance concerns" in 2026 came from newly registered agents or brokers. Additionally, the agency has kicked out "hundreds of non-compliant agents and brokers" this year.

Jason Fine, who runs a brokerage in Florida, said he agrees with the concept behind these changes. He has reported multiple times to CMS, for instance, that rogue agents have switched his clients' coverage without authorization, wanting the agency to take action against them. But he said the updated rules also raise concerns.

"Everything they are doing in the long term makes sense," he said. However, in the short term, "I don't know if they care about the chaos it will cause."

That's because the moratorium will make it much harder for small brokers to help clients this year. His agency and others often pare their staffing after open enrollment but hire again toward the end of the year. He was planning to add up to 10 agents to his core staff of about five but has been told by recruiters that he's unlikely to be able to find anyone who was registered for 2026 and is still available.

He suggested that the move unintentionally benefits larger call centers, some of which were doing much of the marketing that regulators feared led to unauthorized switching. Call centers often maintain larger staffs.

"They can afford to keep a staff of 25 or 40 people all year long," Fine said.

Groups representing agents are very unhappy with the directive. One, the National Association of Benefits and Insurance Professionals, filed a lawsuit on Oct. 15 against the Trump administration over the moratorium, saying it unfairly targets 19,000 agents who may want to sell ACA plans for next year.

"Just because you're a new agent doesn't mean you are fraudulent," said Ronnell Nolan, president of Health Agents for America, another sales agent group, which on Oct. 21 filed suit seeking a temporary restraining order on the moratorium. "All these agencies who have trained new agents and paid thousands of dollars now have people who won't be able to work."

It all leads to an important piece of advice from Georgetown's Pogue: Consumers should not delay making appointments. "If you rely on an agent or broker, and a lot of people do, their slots might fill up faster because there will be fewer of them to help with enrollment. I would reach out early."

Costs will continue to be an issue

This year, after Congress did not renew the expiring enhanced subsidies, most people getting ACA coverage saw what they had to pay increase. Higher earners lost subsidies entirely. Add in double-digit premium increases, and most people had to pay substantially more for their coverage.

Still, most people who buy ACA coverage for next year will receive a subsidy. It will just be less generous than it was before the enhancements expired at the end of 2025.

The subsidies are pegged to the premium costs of benchmark plans, the name given to the second-lowest-priced silver-tier plan in an area.

This helps offset premium increases.

"For most folks, overall affordability will stay about the same," said Louise Norris, a health policy analyst for HealthInsurance.org. "That's not to say it's great, but if you were able to manage the premiums this year, it should be similar to that."

But there are other factors at work, too.

Last year's average premium increase of 26% was the largest in years. It was driven in part by insurers' fear that the expiration of subsidies would cause healthier people to drop out of the marketplace. Other drivers often cited for such increases include a rise in overall medical care costs and general inflation, and labor shortages.

For the upcoming year, those dynamics remain a concern, with premiums slated for double-digit increases, although at 15%, slightly lower than last year.

Subsidies are income-based and cut off for households earning more than four times the federal poverty rate. During this open enrollment season, that amount is $63,840 for a single person, $86,560 for a couple, and $109,280 for a family of three, for example.

"The biggest issue we will face is affordability," said Anne Petry, who, with her father, owns Jaggi Petry Insurance & Investments in Forsyth, Illinois, and helps customers purchase health insurance, including ACA plans. "There definitely will come a breaking point for people."

Agents and other experts say consumers should not allow their plans to automatically renew and should instead go online to compare premiums and coverage, which can change each year even for the same plan. There may be less expensive alternatives, including plans from new insurers, so they suggest looking at not just premiums, but also deductibles and other costs. At the same time, several insurers, including Cigna, have dropped all or part of their ACA coverage areas.

"If you just sit on the sidelines and let the policy auto-renew, you might miss out on what could be a better opportunity," Norris said. She said it is important to check options because the cap on out-of-pocket maximums for ACA plans is also increasing.

That amount, which represents the most a consumer must pay toward deductibles, copayments and coinsurance before the policy is expected to cover remaining in-network medical costs, was $10,600 for an individual and $21,200 for a family plan this year. In 2027, it will grow by 13% to $12,000 for an individual and $24,000 for family coverage. Lower caps on out-of-pocket maximums are set for households earning up to 2.5 times the federal poverty level.

The One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which Congress passed last year, also strips subsidy eligibility from many lawfully present immigrants, including people holding temporary H-1B work visas, refugees, asylees, people with temporary protected status, and those with pending green-card applications.

Three immigrant groups can still get ACA subsidies: green-card holders, who have permanent legal status; certain Cuban and Haitian immigrants; and citizens of Micronesia, the Marshall Islands or Palau.

KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF—an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF.

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WASHINGTON (AP) — More than 4 in 10 names flagged as possible noncitizen voters in California by the Trump administration cannot be found on the state’s voter rolls, according to a legal filing Saturday by an immigrant-rights group.

It’s the first outside analysis of a list that the Department of Justice has used to threaten prosecution of election officials. The analysis also found that thousands of U.S. citizens appear to be flagged as ineligible to vote on the government’s list.

The contention was made in a filing by two data analysts at the University of California, Los Angeles. They analyzed the 20,930 names that the department demanded that California election officials treat as possible illegal voters by separating their ballots during the vote count on Election Day.

Multiple judges have rejected the demand as unconstitutional and a threat to democracy, and local and state officials have said the list appears riddled with errors.

Court filing outlines problems with government list

The breadth of the problems with the list was outlined in Saturday’s filing. It describes an analysis by two members of UCLA’s Voting Rights Project, who filed a lawsuit challenging it with the Los Angeles-based Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights, or CHIRLA.

The research found that 8,880 of the names, representing 42% of the entire list, do not correspond to anyone in California’s current voter file. It also found at least 22 are U.S. citizens, and many more may correspond to those of confirmed citizens.

“The expert analysis further makes clear that the mandated voter list endangers a significant number of eligible California voters,” said the filing, which was cosigned by Xavier Becerra, the Democratic candidate for California governor and an adviser to the UCLA Voting Rights Project. null

The Trump administration had objected to sharing the list, calling it a “fishing expedition” and noting that it included sensitive information. On Saturday, the federal prosecutor who spearheaded the Trump case in California called the analysis “bogus.”

“This is a bogus report by the activist illegal immigrant rights group CHIRLA,” Bill Essayli, who runs the U.S. Attorney’s office in Los Angeles, posted on X.

Also on Saturday, President Donald Trump bemoaned the legal rulings against his effort to force California to separate votes from the individuals his administration labels suspected noncitizens, even though one came from a judge he himself nominated.

In a social media post, Trump claimed his Justice Department found “20,000, but potentially Hundreds of Thousands, and maybe even Millions,” of fraudulent votes, “and the Court has just ruled against it. Why would they reject fixing Election Fraud?”

The Trump administration has also urged Washington state to remove what it says were 400 possible noncitizens on its rolls, though state election officials there say that list is also unreliable and includes one voter who cast ballots in the 1990s.

The Justice Department has warned California election officials they could face criminal liability if they let noncitizens vote and issued subpoenas to election officials there.

Election officials say they have no time to investigate

Election officials have complained that the Trump administration has confronted them with lists of possible illegal voters at the last minute before Election Day, with no time to conduct the painstaking investigation required by law before removing someone from the rolls.

Multiple lawsuits have been filed to stop the administration from continuing to threaten local election officials.

On Friday, a federal judge in California ordered the Justice Department to stop sending demands to state officials, a decision the Trump administration appealed Saturday. Several counties in the state had run quick checks of the Trump list and found numerous errors.

Saturday’s broader analysis was possible because a federal judge on Friday ordered the Trump administration to share the list with the plaintiffs in the case.

CHIRLA and the UCLA project sued the Homeland Security Department in early October to prevent it from using federal immigration data to challenge state voter rolls. The lawsuit cited examples in other states where the federal government’s data has been proven to mistakenly include thousands of citizens.

Case argues that government’s methods pose risk to voting

The case argued that the data-matching methods risk disenfranchising or deterring citizens from voting. On top of that, plaintiffs argued, the lists could disproportionately target naturalized citizens who are legally entitled to vote.

Applying the government’s methodology, the UCLA researchers found that nearly 7,500 naturalized citizens in the state were “highly likely” to be incorrectly flagged as ineligible.

The researchers noted that the administration apparently removed the voter identification number from the names, making it harder for election officials to determine whether the flagged individuals were already on their rolls or were duplicates in the Justice Department list. They described the voter ID number as the most crucial data point.

The Justice Department argues that there is just as much to lose if the ballots aren’t separated.

“Every ballot cast by an ineligible voter cancels out the vote of an American citizen,” Kiersten V. Pels, a spokesperson for the department, wrote in an email. “The Department makes no apology for protecting those votes.”