Trump administration sues California over noncitizens on voter rolls
Lawsuit comes weeks before midterm elections and follows debunked claims of noncitizens voting in various states.
Key points
- Trump administration sues California over 20,000 alleged noncitizen voters on rolls.
- California officials say the DOJ list was never sent to the Secretary of State.
- The lawsuit comes 21 days before the November 3 midterm elections.
The administration of US President Donald Trump sued California on Thursday in a US District Court in California, after the state missed a 48-hour deadline to review a list of registered noncitizen voters. The Department of Justice (DOJ) asked the court to stop the state from counting mail-in ballots from voters on a list it said contained 20,000 noncitizens.
The DOJ said it had tried to work collaboratively with California to identify noncitizens registered to vote, but that California made no serious effort to do so. The deadline was given in letters sent on Tuesday to officials in several California counties.
California officials respond
California Secretary of State Shirley Weber, the top state official for elections, said in a three-page letter that she wanted to set the record straight. She said the administration is demanding unprecedented measures that threaten thousands of Californians' right to vote, based on unverifiable information or methodology that the DOJ still fails to explain or provide.
Weber said she was informed the lists given to local officials include roughly 20,000 individuals, but that no list was ever sent to her office. She wrote that the DOJ demanded her office review and confirm the citizenship status of each person on the list on the eve of an election and within 48 hours, calling it an emergency of the DOJ's creation.
sad, desperate attempt by
— California Governor Gavin Newsom
Local election office concerns
Los Angeles County election officials, one of the county offices that received the DOJ ultimatum, said in a statement on Wednesday that the threat was issued just 21 days before midterm elections. The county said it received a thumb drive with the letter and a handwritten note with what appeared to be a password, but would not attempt to access the drive because it does not consider the device a secure medium.
The county office said maintaining accurate voter lists was a fundamental responsibility for its office and that state laws clearly require that removing individuals be based on verifiable information.
