DOJ tells California to review whether noncitizens got mail ballots

Key points

• The Justice Department ordered California to review a federal list of people it believes may have received mail-in ballots without being U.S. citizens.
• California's secretary of state said the federal government did not provide the list to her office, while Los Angeles County's registrar said the records came on an unaccessed USB drive.
• The Justice Department has lost 26 of 31 lawsuits seeking unredacted state voter rolls and has not won any of those cases.

The Justice Department has told California to review a list of people the federal government believes may have received mail-in ballots for the November election despite not being U.S. citizens, according to a letter reviewed by CBS News.

In the Oct. 13 letter, acting Deputy Attorney General Trent McCotter set a 48-hour deadline to review the names, which were provided on a password-protected thumb drive, and determine each person's citizenship status.

What the letter requested

McCotter asked California to segregate, not cancel, the vote-by-mail ballots of people whose citizenship cannot be independently confirmed, until that status is determined. He also asked officials to take immediate and reasonable steps to withhold ballots from people on the list who have not yet been sent one.

Similar letters were mailed to other counties in the state, a person with knowledge of the matter said. Reuters was the first to report on the letter.

The USDOJ's relentless efforts to unlawfully gain access to states' protected voter data and purge voter rolls serve only to cause chaos and fuel public distrust in our elections.

— Shirley Weber

California officials respond

California Secretary of State Shirley Weber confirmed her office received a letter from the Justice Department but said the federal government did not provide the list of alleged noncitizens to her office. She said the department's efforts to gain access to protected voter data and purge voter rolls serve only to cause chaos and fuel public distrust in elections.

Dean Logan, registrar-recorder and county clerk of Los Angeles County, confirmed receiving the letter but said the records were on a USB drive his office had not accessed. He said the drive conflicts with data privacy and information security protocols, that the letter does not specify how many people are involved or describe the records, and that removing a voter from eligibility must be based on verifiable information rather than unconfirmed data matching.

Background on the push

The move follows a July statement by Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin to California's secretary of state that the government believed noncitizens were listed on its voter rolls. The Justice Department's Civil Rights Division has filed 31 lawsuits to force states to hand over unredacted voter rolls, saying it wants clean lists but also acknowledging it intends to share the data with Homeland Security to screen for noncitizens.

The department has lost 26 of those cases and has not achieved a legal victory to date, resorting to public voter lists and other investigative means. Since President Trump took office, it has criminally charged more than 100 people with voter fraud-related crimes. A Reuters analysis published last month found states may have added more than 30,000 self-declared noncitizens to voter rolls since 2000 through software glitches and clerical errors, a figure small next to the roughly 174 million registered voters in the 2024 election.