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

The U. S. Department of Justice has sent a letter to California Secretary of State Shirley Weber, threatening the state with possible legal action over what it claims are noncitizens believed to have received mail ballots for the upcoming midterm elections.

The letter, dated Tuesday, gives California 48 hours to determine whether any citizens are included on 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, and the state has a process in place to verify the citizenship of voters.

However, the Justice Department claims that over 190,000 noncitizens are on California's voter rolls, a figure that the state disputes. The Department of Homeland Security had previously claimed this number, but refused to provide the methodology or data sources when the state asked for them. The Justice Department's request for California to review the list of alleged noncitizens comes just three weeks before Election Day.

The state's office has issued a statement saying that it will not blindly trust the federal government's claims without evidence or legal authority to justify the request. California requires that only U. S.

citizens can register to vote and that those who are not eligible are removed from the voter rolls. A similar letter was sent to the registrar's office in Los Angeles County, which had been investigated by the U. S.

attorney's office during the state's June primary. Los Angeles County Registrar Dean Logan said that his office received a thumb drive containing a list of alleged noncitizens on the voter rolls, along with a handwritten note providing a password to access the list. Logan stated that he did not consider the thumb drive a secure device and has not yet accessed any files.

He also expressed concerns about the reliability of the data and the accuracy of the claims made by the federal government. Logan's office is working with the secretary of state and attorney general's offices to decide how to proceed. California Attorney General Rob Bonta slammed the letter in an unrelated press conference, calling it another example of President Donald Trump spreading "absolutely false conspiracy theories" about widespread voter fraud.

Bonta did not say how the secretary of state's office would respond to the Justice Department, but said that the state would not engage in conspiracy theories. 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.

However, the problem of noncitizen voters is relatively rare, and most states have implemented robust verification processes to ensure the integrity of their elections. 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. However, election officials in those states were skeptical of the claim, and the number of actual registered noncitizens turned out to be zero in Nevada.

The Justice Department has been seeking detailed voter information from the states, including dates of birth, addresses, driver's license numbers, and partial Social Security numbers. However, 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 that the 48-hour deadline to vet voters flagged by the federal government was "completely unreasonable."

She stated that when there is a report of an ineligible voter incorrectly on the rolls, her office does due diligence to investigate, which involves looking at the voter's registration history, identifying whether that person had voted before, and reaching out to the voter. "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 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."