The Brief

California is among several dozen states that have thus far resisted the Trump administration’s demands for access to sensitive information, including driver’s license and Social Security numbers, about tens of millions of voters. Earlier this month, a federal judge in L.A. dismissed the administration’s lawsuit against California, saying the federal government doesn’t have a right to the personal information of the state’s 23 million voters.

But that’s unlikely to be the end of the battle: the Trump administration has nearly identical lawsuits pending against 22 other states and the District of Columbia.

In the most recent episode of the LAist podcast Imperfect Paradise, we examined what’s behind the Trump administration's quest to collect voter data. What could be done with that information? And why are election officials in California and around the country resisting the federal government's demands?

Here are some highlights of that conversation, edited and expanded for clarity, between Imperfect Paradise host Nereida Moreno and LAist correspondent Jill Replogle.

Before we dive in, what’s the topline here? 

The U.S. Department of Justice says it needs states’ complete voter files to make sure states are preventing voter fraud. But critics worry the government has other motives, including trying to amass a national voter file that could be used to attack political opponents, and cancel the registrations of legitimate voters.

Jill, you've reported on local politics in Southern California for years. How and when did this battle between California and the federal government over sensitive voter data begin? 

I'm based in Orange County and I've covered quite a few elections there. Orange County's election system and the Registrar of Voters is really top-notch and super well-respected around the state.

But recently a couple of very big things happened in Orange County that election integrity skeptics would say confirmed their suspicions that our election systems are not as secure as officials make them out to be.

Let's talk about those. What happened?

Well, the most scandalous one was the voting dog. A woman in Costa Mesa named Laura Yourex registered her dog Maya to vote and then actually voted for the dog in the 2021 recall election of Gov. Gavin Newsom and the 2022 presidential primary.

Just to be clear, did the dog walk into a polling place or, like, how did they vote?

No, but fair question. Yourex just registered the dog to vote and then she turned in the ballots that were sent out in the dog’s name.

Yourex essentially turned herself in last year. She was ultimately charged with five felonies and she could face six years in state prison. She said she did it to expose flaws in the election system.

Orange County District Attorney Todd Spitzer talks about election security at the county registrar's office on Feb. 26, 2024.

(

Jill Replogle

/

LAist

)

And what was the second thing that happened that fueled these concerns about voter fraud? 

We have to back up a little for this one. Michael Gates, the former city attorney of Huntington Beach, was contacted by a resident in October 2024 who said that their father-in-law, who was not a U.S. citizen, had received a ballot.

A few months later, Gates gets a job in the Trump administration's Department of Justice, and one of the first things he does is request records from the Orange County Registrar of people removed from the list of registered voters because they weren’t citizens.

Page, the Registrar, gives him 17 records of people removed since 2020 because they didn't meet the citizenship requirement. But he redacts sensitive information, including their driver’s license and Social Security numbers, per state law on elections and privacy.

And then the DOJ sues the Registrar to get access to that redacted, sensitive information. Soon after, the DOJ sues California for its entire, unredacted database of registered voters, about 23 million people. To date, the federal government has sued 24 states and the District of Columbia for their voter data. The Brennan Center for Justice is tracking the issue.

In California, federal Judge David O. Carter recently ruled that the federal government is not entitled to that data. A judge in Oregon made a similar, tentative ruling. But all the other cases are still pending.

Orange County Registrar of Voters Bob Page outside of the main office in Santa Ana.

(

Jill Replogle

/

LAist

)

Why are states pushing so hard against this request for their voter data?

I think, in part, it speaks to the increasing partisan divide in everything, including how we run our elections. There are some states that have handed all of this data over willingly to the federal government. They're all red states.

Most, but definitely not all, of the states that have resisted handing over the data are blue states.

The states that are resisting have several main reasons. For one thing, the Constitution grants states the responsibility to determine how they run elections, not the federal government. Elections are very clearly a state power.

Another thing is that California law and similar laws in many other states prohibit those states from sharing private information about their voters.

Also, these states say federal election law, and the federal Privacy Act, prohibit the federal government from collecting this kind of data without providing a very specific reason. Under the Privacy Act, the government also has to give public notice before they collect data, they have to say how they're going to use it, and they have to provide an opportunity for public comment.

Elections experts and voting rights advocates have also weighed in on the debate. What have they told you about the federal government’s push to collect this data?

One of their major questions is, what does the federal government plan to do with the data? The Trump administration hasn't clearly answered that question. According to critics, a big suspicion is that they want to use it for immigration enforcement.

Bob Page, the Orange County Registrar of Voters, explains election operations to a group of reporters on Feb. 26, 2024.

(

Jill Replogle

/

LAist

)

Officials have gone back and forth when asked if they plan to share this data with the Department of Homeland Security. But here's how that could work. There's a database run by the Department of Homeland Security called SAVE that's essentially a citizenship check. They could run all this voter data through that system to try to crosscheck whether there are non-citizens voting.

But there are questions about the accuracy of SAVE. In fact, one of our NPR colleagues recently reported on naturalized citizens who have been improperly flagged in this system as not being eligible to vote and have had their registrations canceled.

So there's a concern about voter suppression, and about people who actually are eligible to vote being removed from voter rolls improperly.

It’s important to note that state election officials and county election officials are constantly removing people from registration rolls who died or moved out of state. They're adding people who are registering to vote. They're changing people's addresses. It's a super dynamic system. And some experts, including Eileen O’Connor with the Brennan Center, expressed doubt that the federal government could do that better than individual states:

O’Connor and others also told me they worry that the federal government could use the data to promote false claims about election fraud, and to target political opponents.

A glimpse at part of the ballot counting process at the Orange County Registrar of Voters

(

Jill Replogle

/

LAist

)

There’s also a big concern about amassing that much data, right?

Yes, from states and from privacy experts. If the federal government is, indeed, trying to compile a national voter file, that's something like 75% of Americans (of voting age). Just imagine what a gold mine that would be for a hacker.

And there have been some questions about how seriously the Trump administration takes data security. The Washington Post recently reported that a DOGE employee improperly shared Americans’ private social security data with an outside political group, with the aim of overturning election results in some states. The Justice Department admitted to this in a court filing in a whistleblower case.

Earlier this month, Judge Carter agreed with California in his ruling dismissing the government's demand for voter data. What did he say in his ruling? 

Judge Carter essentially scolded the Justice Department for trying to use legislation intended to prevent voter suppression during the civil rights era to try to “amass and retain an unprecedented amount of confidential voter data.” He largely agreed with many of the concerns laid out by California and other states, and voting rights advocates. And he said further:

Carter also echoed some of the deeper concerns expressed by critics of this effort by the Trump administration, including that the government could use the data to spy on everyday Americans. The Privacy Act was actually put in place in response to Watergate and counterintelligence programs, where the government was spying on folks like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., on the Black Panthers, on anti-war protestors, on Black Americans, in general.

Carter said the Trump administration’s demand for California voters' data violates the Privacy Act.

What is likely to come next in this battle? How does this get resolved?

Judge Carter said from the beginning that he wanted to make a ruling quickly under the assumption that the case would be appealed and could eventually make it to the Supreme Court. If that happens, the Supreme Court could have the final decision on whether the federal government gets access to voter data from California and all the other states it has sued.

Can we go back to those 17 people in Orange County who were removed from the voter rolls. That incident kinda kicked off this whole battle for voter data, at least in California. How did those people get registered to vote in the first place if they weren’t citizens? 

Most people in California register to vote through the DMV. In fact, you are automatically registered to vote when you get a license or change your address unless you opt out, or indicate that you are not eligible to vote.

Basically, you have to check a box saying that you are a citizen. You attest, under penalty of perjury, to being a citizen. That’s required under federal election law. But you don’t have to prove it.

Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Harmeet Dhillon has vowed to root out voter fraud and "make our elections great again."

(

Andrew Harnik

/

Getty Images

)

These 17 people removed from the rolls, all but one self-reported that they were ineligible to vote. So it’s possible they made a mistake at the DMV. (The one who didn’t self-report, a Canadian citizen, was charged with four felonies for casting ballots in the primary and general election in 2016.)

Still, some people argue that checking a box attesting to citizenship is not a serious enough safeguard against people who are not eligible to vote actually registering to vote, and perhaps voting. And President Trump has put some of the most vocal critics in positions of power.

Well, how big of a problem are incidents like the 17 non-citizens registered in O.C. and the voting dog? 

On the one hand, 17 people out of about two million registered voters in the county is not a lot. On the other, some elections are won by very slim margins.

Still, many well-respected experts on elections, including Justin Levitt, a Loyola Law School professor, say there’s no indication of widespread election fraud. Yes, we could put in more requirements to guard against fraud, but it would likely come at the expense of shutting out, and at the least, making it more difficult for eligible people to register and vote. Levitt has this analogy he likes to make to put it in perspective:

If we do decide we want more safeguards, Congress could pass a law. In fact, there’s a bill in Congress right now that would amend the National Voter Registration Act to require proof of citizenship to register to vote in a federal election.

But there's still a really big debate about how expansive, how easy versus how hard we want to make it for people to vote. There's a history in this country of making it very difficult for certain people to vote, especially Black Americans.

After the civil rights era, federal rules were put into place to try to encourage participation, to make it easier to vote. And so there's a big question of whether we want to go backwards.

California voters might get a chance to weigh in on this debate in the fall, when we're likely to have a voter ID measure on the ballot. That measure is asking people whether we want to require people to show a photo ID when they vote, or to include the last four digits of a government issued ID on their mail-in ballot.

It also would require the state to try to verify people's citizenship. So that'll be a real test of how Californians feel about this issue.

It’s about the size of a park bench and made of steel and wood. The bench’s arm rests are formed by the letters “L” and “A” in a design that’s unmistakable to any sports fan. But the welder-artist who created it says it’s not a Dodgers bench.

“This is about civic pride, L.A. pride. I made a design statement saying that it has nothing affiliated with the Dodgers,” said Steve Campos.

Campos grew up near Dodger Stadium, raised by parents who were die-hard Dodgers fans. So much, that they named him after Steve Garvey but that legacy doesn’t keep him from confronting how the Dodgers benefitted from the mass displacement of working-class people from Chavez Ravine after World War Two. That’s why he calls it an L.A. Bench, and not a Dodgers Bench.

The logo may be synonymous with the city's beloved baseball team, but the design of the interlocking letters was used by the L.A. Angels minor league baseball team before the Dodgers moved to L.A. in 1958.

“The monogram was here before the Dodgers,” Campos said.

A second-generation welder

Welding is the Campos family business. His father created gates and security bars for windows and doors for L.A. clients. That was the foundation for the work Campos has done for two decades since graduating from Lincoln High School, L.A. Trade Tech College, and enrolling in a summer program at Art Center in Pasadena.

The inspiration for the L.A. Bench came last year while he was playing around in his shop creating versions of the L.A. logo. A friend he hangs with at Echo Park Lake asked Campos to make him a piece of furniture.

“I was trying to figure out what my friend Curly wanted. He liked Dodgers and drinking and getting into fights, so I was like, 'Let me make something with the LA monogram,'” he said.

Welder-artist Steve Campos created whimsical steel sculptures with the LA logo.

(

Courtesy Steve Campos

)

It didn’t design itself. He said he had to lengthen the legs on the “A” and lean the back of the “L” in order to make the bench functional. In the process, he’s made a piece of furniture with a ubiquitous logo that he’s embedded with his own L.A. pride, as well as city history past and present.

LA civic pride travels to Japan

Campos vacationed in Japan the last week of April and took advantage of the trip to reach out to people who may be interested in the L.A. Bench. He was caught off guard by people’s reaction when he showed them pictures of it.

“They look at it and they go, 'Oh, Ohtani bench,'” he said.

For them, it’s still a bench embedded with pride, he said, but centered around Dodgers star Shohei Ohtani, an icon in his native Japan.

Campos has made four L.A. benches and is selling them fully assembled, he said, for $2,500 each — taking into account his labor and how costly the raw materials have become. For now, he’s offering the metal parts as a package for $500, which requires the buyer to purchase the wood for the seat and the back — an easy process, he said.

While he has no plans to mass produce the L.A. Bench, he does have one goal in mind that shows how hard it is for him to separate L.A. civic pride and the Dodgers.

“I would love to get a couple of them installed at Dodger Stadium,” he said.

The Venice Boardwalk after sunset has generally been a no-go zone for tourists and locals alike, as the beachside bars and restaurants close on the early side and safety is often an issue. Now, a group of artists is out to bring some vibrancy to the creative neighborhood with a series of new installations that will include live evening performances – and even a “Venice Opera House.”

“Let's play with light and let's play with sound and give people a reason to come to the Boardwalk after sundown,” said artist and entrepreneur Stefan Ashkenazy, who is curating the project and owns the buildings housing them. “I mean, let's just be open 24 hours a day.”

The concept doesn’t have an official name yet, but he’s been calling it “See World.”

Artist James Ostrer's space looks out from a bed through the fence to the ocean at Venice Beach.

(

Laura Hertzfeld

/

LAist

)

William Attaway, a longtime Venice artist, created a gallery space filled with various paintings and sculptures.

(

Laura Hertzfeld

/

LAist

)

The pair of modern buildings on the Venice Boardwalk at Thornton Ave. – with their big balconies, floor-to-ceiling glass windows, and seven open garage-style retail spaces – have sat mostly empty since Snapchat vacated their beachside offices in 2019. Ashkenazy recently bought the building and recruited artists to fill those front-facing spaces with creative work until a full-time tenant comes in.

Over the past several weeks the installations have been created in real-time, in public.

All of the projects are loosely along the theme of “home,” with each artist claiming a “room” in the two buildings that stretch across a full block on the Boardwalk. Several local Venice artists are featured, including William Attaway, whose intricate mosaic work is recognizable on the Venice public restrooms along the beach. Attaway’s space features a floating larger-than-life-sized statue and various works in a mini-gallery. In the next room is Robin Murez’s pieces, featuring carved wooden seats from her beloved neighborhood Venice Flying Carousel.

Ashkenazy is no stranger to wild (and wildly successful) art ideas. He’s the owner of the Petit Ermitage hotel in West Hollywood, a longtime haven for visiting artists, and the founder of the decade-old Bombay Beach Biennale, where artists install all kinds of work in an annual event near the Salton Sea. Many of the artists from that community are featured at the Venice project.

A "Venice Opera House" will host pop-up music events throughout the summer.

(

Laura Hertfeldz

/

LAist

)

New York-based artist Greg Haberny's paintings on the wall of his Venice space.

(

Laura Hertzfeld

/

LAist

)

New York-based artist Greg Haberny and London-based artist James Ostrer have brought some of their work in the Bombay Beach Biennale to the Venice project. Their windows on the Boardwalk both speak to a child-like sense of wonder and creativity.

“I think it's just kind of exploring and playing a little bit, to have the freedom to be able to do that,” Haberny says of his imagined child’s bedroom space, which includes a fort made out of puffy cheese balls. “It's a big space, too.
It's beautiful.”

Ostrer is experimenting with a performance art idea where he sits in bed amongst a room full of his own artwork, which he describes as “happy art with an edge.” Looking out at the ocean from the bed, he’s invited passersby to sit and have chats with him about his work or anything else they want to talk about.

“It’s a very intimate space, so you have a different kind of conversation,” he said. “I use art to channel human creativity, and [talk about] dark things.”

While there are open fences that block off the spaces, they aren’t sealed up at night. Both Ashkenazy and the team of artists seemed open to the idea that anything could happen and that the installations are a conversation with the public – and with that comes some risk.

Greg Haberny (right) works with his assistants on an installation featuring kid-inspired graffiti art and a "cheesy puff" fort.

(

Laura Hertzfeld

/

LAist

)

“I don't really know if I [would] say worried, but I guess it's just the cost of doing business,” Haberny said. “I don't really make things to get damaged or broken, sure. But I have done [things like] burned all my paintings and then made paint out of ash.”

While he’s felt safe – and even slept overnight in the installation – Ostrer has been collaborating with a local female artist who performs in a pig mask in front of his installation some nights. Watching her perform, he said, has taught him about the vulnerability of women in public spaces like the Boardwalk. “I've started to, on a very fractional level, have seen how scary that is. Because I've sat in the bed behind her performing at the front here… the way in which men are approaching her and shrieking at her … it's shocking.”

Ashkenazy says he will keep the artists in the space, potentially rotating new ones in, until a fulltime tenant takes over.

“This is an experiment … and after acquiring the building, the intention wasn't, ‘let's open a bunch of public art spaces,’ he said. “It is kind of …what the building wanted and listening to what the Boardwalk needed. Let's play, let's have the artists that we love and appreciate have a space to play and engage and give the locals and the visitors to the Boardwalk something to experience.”

A new trail across the beloved natural area of Elephant Hill in Northeast Los Angeles is officially opening this weekend.

The route is years in the making, and it's a big milestone in the decades-long conservation efforts to preserve this local jewel in the community of El Sereno.

The hiking trail connects one side of Elephant Hill to the other — from the corner of Pullman Street and Harriman Avenue all the way across to Lathrop Street.

It's 0.75 miles in total, but packs a punch.

"It's a pretty straight shot, but because of the terrain — the trail is kind of twisty and curvy. There's switchbacks — and great views," Elva Yañez, board president of the nonprofit Save Elephant Hill, said.

People have always been able to access the 110-acre green space, but Yañez said the new trail provides a safe and easy way to navigate the steep hillsides.

The El Sereno nonprofit has been working for two decades to preserve the land. Illegal dumping and off-roading have damaged the open space over the years. And the majority of the 110 acres are privately owned by an estimated 200 individual owners.

Mountains Recreation and Conservation Authority (MRCA) joined the efforts in 2018, spurred by a $700,000 grant from Los Angeles County Regional Park and Open Space District, in part, to build the trail. The local agency received some $2 million in grants from the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy to add to the 10 acres of Elephant Hill it manages and conserves. This year, MCRA acquired an additional 12 parcels — or about 2.4 acres.

And the spiffy new footpath — with trail signage, information kiosks and landscape boulders — is not just a long-sought-for victory but a beginning in a sense.

"We know that it means a lot to the community," Sarah Kevorkian, who oversees the trail project for MRCA, said. "We're wrapping up the trail, but it really feels like the beginning of all that is to come."

A hint of that vision already exists — for hikers traversing the new route, courtesy of Test Plot, the L.A.-based nonprofit that works to revitalize depleted lands.

"They're able to see at the end of the trail, at the 'test plot' — exactly what a restored Elephant Hill would look like," Yañez said.

Here's a preview:

A coalition of residents from across the San Gabriel Valley are mobilizing over a battery storage project and possibly more industrial development in the City of Industry they say could pollute communities next door.

A protest is scheduled today in neighboring Rowland Heights, targeting a 400-megawatt battery energy storage facility sited on about 9 acres that was approved by the City of Industry leaders in January.

Such Battery Energy Storage Systems, or BESS, are used to keep the power grid stable, especially as output from renewable energy sources like solar and wind fluctuate. But fires involving lithium batteries at some sites have heightened environmental and public health fears.

Because of the City of Industry’s unusual, sprawling shape stretching along the 60 Freeway, it borders on more than a dozen communities, meaning what happens there can have far-reaching impact.

“Pollution does not end right at the border,” said Andrew Yip, an organizer with No Data Centers SGV Coalition. “Pollution travels.”

Some local activists with the Puente Hills Community Preservation Association have challenged the approval of the battery facility under the California Environmental Quality Act.

Beyond environmental concerns, locals have also been frustrated with how decisions are made by officials in the City of Industry, a municipality that’s almost entirely zoned for industrial use and has less than 300 residents.

Organizers say they’ve struggled to get direct responses from city officials whom they say have replaced regular meetings with special meetings, which under state law require less advance notice.

A city spokesperson has not responded to requests for comment.

The so-called Marici Energy Storage System Facility would be run by Aypa Power. The fact that the battery storage developer is owned by the private equity giant Blackstone, a major investor in AI and data centers, has only fueled concerns that a battery storage facility would lay the groundwork for data center development.

A request for comment from Aypa was not returned.

Today’s protest is taking place at Peter F. Schabarum Regional Park in Rowland Heights across the street from the Puente Hills Mall, a largely vacant “dead” mall, which activists fear could be redeveloped into a data center and bring higher utility costs and greater air and noise pollution.

Yip pointed out that industrial developments make a lot of money for the City of Industry.

“But none of these surrounding communities receive any of those benefits,” Yip said. “Yet we have to put up with all the harmful effects and impacts from this city that does all this development without really reaching out.”