Key takeaways:
- An Oct. 13 Justice Department letter gives California 48 hours to check the citizenship status of people named on a password-protected thumb drive.
- The department asks officials to segregate, not cancel, ballots from people whose citizenship cannot be independently confirmed and to withhold ballots not yet sent to them.
- CBS News reported that the Justice Department has lost 26 lawsuits seeking unredacted state voter rolls and has not secured a legal victory in any of the cases.
The Justice Department has given California 48 hours to check the citizenship status of people it says may have received mail ballots despite being ineligible to vote, and has demanded that officials hold their ballots apart from others until the checks are complete.
In an Oct. 13 letter reviewed by CBS News, acting Deputy Attorney General Trent McCotter directed officials to review a list of names supplied on a password-protected thumb drive. The number of people on the list and how the department compiled it have not been disclosed.
“For individuals whom you cannot independently confirm citizenship status, we request that you immediately instruct the appropriate elections official to segregate — not cancel — those individuals’ vote-by-mail ballots until their citizenship status can be determined,” McCotter wrote.
He also asked officials to take “all immediate and reasonable steps” to withhold ballots from people on the list who had not yet received them, pending confirmation of their citizenship. Talking Points Memo, citing Reuters, reported that the department also demanded that ballots already returned by those voters not be counted until their status is confirmed. McCotter threatened to seek emergency relief in court if California does not comply, the outlet reported.
“Allowing noncitizens to vote cancels citizen votes,” McCotter wrote, according to Talking Points Memo.
The letter reviewed by CBS News was sent to the Los Angeles County clerk’s office. A person familiar with the matter told CBS News that similar letters went to other California counties. Talking Points Memo reported that the Justice Department confirmed the letter’s existence and described a letter to California Secretary of State Shirley Weber. CBS News said it had sought comment from Weber’s office.
The demand comes after mail ballots began going out to every California voter on Oct. 5, when ballot drop-off centers also opened statewide, according to Talking Points Memo. It follows a July warning from Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin to California’s secretary of state that the federal government believed noncitizens were on the state’s voter rolls, CBS News reported.
The Justice Department has also sought unredacted voter rolls from states. CBS News reported that its Civil Rights Division filed 31 lawsuits to obtain the lists, saying it wanted to ensure they were accurate. The division later acknowledged that it intended to share the data with the Department of Homeland Security for screening for noncitizens. According to CBS News, the department has lost 26 of the cases and has not secured a legal victory in any of them.
A Reuters analysis published last month found that states may have added more than 30,000 self-declared noncitizens to voter rolls since 2000 because of software glitches and clerical errors in processing driver’s licenses and state IDs, CBS News reported. The figure is small compared with the roughly 174 million people registered to vote in 2024, according to Census data cited by CBS News.
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