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

The U.S. Department of Justice has threatened California with possible legal action over what it says are noncitizens believed to have received mail ballots for next month’s midterm elections.

A letter sent Tuesday to Secretary of State Shirley Weber from Trent McCotter, the acting deputy U.S. attorney general, says the department has provided officials in Los Angeles County with a password-protected thumb drive with a list of names the federal government believes are likely noncitizens who were sent ballots to participate in the Nov. 3 election.

California mails ballots to all registered voters.

The letter obtained by The Associated Press gives the state 48 hours to determine whether any citizens are included on the list. For individuals whose citizenship cannot be independently verified, the state is to instruct local election officials to segregate their mail-in ballots until their status can be determined, and to not provide a ballot to anyone who has not yet received it. The letters warns that legal action may follow if the state does not meet the 48-hour deadline to review the list.

“If you cannot implement this process by then, given the ongoing federal election, the United States will have no choice but to seek emergency relief,” the letter states.

A separate, similar letter was sent to the registrar’s office in Los Angeles County, which the U.S. attorney’s office had investigated during the state’s June primary.

Neither the California secretary of state nor the Los Angeles County registrar immediately responded to requests seeking comment.

The Trump administration has made the hunt for noncitizen voters a priority this year, even though the problem is exceptionally rare. The Justice Department has charged about 90 people for various types of election misconduct so far this year, including 50 who are alleged to have voted as noncitizens. There were more than 227 million registered voters in the United States during the 2024 presidential election.

In July, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin sent letters to California, Nevada, New Jersey and Pennsylvania, alleging that as many as 250,000 noncitizens were registered in those states. Election officials there were skeptical of the claim, including Weber, the California secretary of state.

“I have serious doubts about the reliability of your data and accuracy of your claims, since my office has not shared our statewide voter registration list with DHS or any other federal agency or official,” Weber said in response.

That same month, the Republican administration claimed Nevada had 1,500 noncitizen voters on its voter rolls. But after the federal government identified them to the state, the number of actual registered noncitizens turned out to be zero.

As part of its project to find noncitizens on the voter rolls, the Justice Department has been seeking detailed voter information — including dates of birth, addresses, driver’s license numbers and partial Social Security numbers — from the states. Some Republican-led states have turned over the information, which has been run through a U.S. Department of Homeland Security database that has been criticized as inaccurately flagging U.S. citizens.

The Justice Department has sued 30 states and the District of Columbia for that information, but so far has lost those cases in court. California is among the states that successfully sued, in part by arguing that turning over the data would violate state privacy laws.

Santa Cruz County Clerk Tricia Webber, who is president of the California Association of Clerks and Election Officials, said she had not seen the letters but said the 48-hour deadline to vet voters flagged by the federal government was “completely unreasonable.”

She said when there is a report of an ineligible voter incorrectly on the rolls, her office does due diligence to investigate. That involves looking at the voter’s registration history, identifying whether that person had voted before and, most importantly, reaching out to the voter, she said.

“It would take more than 48 hours to even begin to get the full picture,” Webber said. She also questioned how the federal government came up with a list of alleged noncitizen voters since it doesn’t have access to the state’s detailed voter information.

Webber added that throughout the course of her decades-long career working for local election agencies, she has “never seen anything that would make me believe that our voter records are filled with fraudulent voters.”