U.S. sues California in fight over checking citizenship of mail voters
The lawsuit by the Trump administration comes less than a month before the midterm election that will determine which party controls both chambers of Congress.
Key points
- The DOJ sued California to stop counting mail ballots from likely noncitizens until citizenship is verified.
- The suit followed a 48-hour deadline set for California's secretary of state.
- Gov. Newsom and Secretary of State Weber rejected the DOJ's demands as baseless.
The U.S. Department of Justice sued California on Thursday over how the state prevents non-U.S. citizens from voting by mail in federal elections. The civil complaint, filed in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, asks a judge to stop California officials from counting mail-in ballots from "likely non-citizens" until their citizenship status is determined.
The lawsuit is the latest DOJ action targeting state election administration, which President Donald Trump has often criticized as vulnerable to fraud and voting by noncitizens. Noncitizens are barred from voting in federal elections.
What the DOJ demanded
The DOJ asked the judge to order California to set aside mail ballots from voters identified by the federal government as likely noncitizens and to verify their citizenship before counting. The suit came two days after acting U.S. Deputy Attorney General Trent McCotter gave California Secretary of State Shirley Weber 48 hours to determine whether any U.S. citizens were on a DOJ list of people believed to be likely noncitizens who were sent ballots for the Nov. 3 election.
McCotter told Weber the state needed to tell local election officials to segregate mail ballots until citizenship status could be determined and not send ballots to anyone who had not yet received one. He said that if the state could not implement the process, the U.S. would seek emergency relief. The DOJ had previously given Los Angeles County officials a thumb drive containing the questioned names.
This is an emergency of the DOJ's creation.
— Shirley Weber
California officials respond
Gov. Gavin Newsom, in a post on X on Wednesday, said in anticipation of the suit, "More dangerous nonsense from a President losing his grip on reality." He wrote that Trump was demanding California election officials violate federal law and that California's elections are not Trump's to control.
Weber's office said in a statement Thursday that Trump and DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullen made unsubstantiated claims in July that California had 190,000 noncitizens on its voter rolls. It said the secretary of state requested written information about the methodology and data sources but the federal government refused and provided nothing. Weber said the DOJ's efforts to gain access to voter data and purge rolls cause chaos and fuel public distrust. She said California has robust laws requiring only U.S. citizens to register and removing non-eligible registrants.
