Key takeaways:
- The Justice Department alleges more than 20,000 noncitizens are unlawfully registered to vote in California and seeks to halt counting of their mail-in ballots pending citizenship checks.
- California’s secretary of state says her office never received the list and objects to a 48-hour deadline to verify roughly 20,000 people.
- Los Angeles County officials declined to access a federal thumb drive containing names, saying it was not a secure medium.
The Justice Department sued California on Thursday, seeking to stop the state from counting mail-in ballots from people it alleges are noncitizens, weeks before the November 3 midterm elections. California officials say the federal government has not provided verifiable information to support the proposed action.
In a lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in California, the department said it had identified more than 20,000 noncitizens unlawfully registered to vote. It asked a judge to block the state from tabulating mail-in ballots from people it considers likely noncitizens until their citizenship can be determined.
“The Federal Government asked California to work collaboratively to identify any noncitizens registered to vote in the State. California made no serious effort to do so,” the lawsuit said.
Attorney General Todd Blanche called “state-facilitated voter fraud” unacceptable. “If found responsible in a court of law, the State of California will have seriously undermined confidence in our electoral system,” he said.
The suit followed letters sent Tuesday to officials in several California counties, giving them 48 hours to review lists of suspected noncitizens. A letter to Los Angeles County included a password-protected thumb drive containing names compiled by the Department of Homeland Security, according to CBS News.
Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk Dean Logan said his office would not access the drive because it did not consider it a secure medium. County officials said state law requires verifiable information before voters can be removed from the rolls.
California Secretary of State Shirley Weber said no list was sent to her office. In a letter to federal officials, she said the demand to check the citizenship of roughly 20,000 people within 48 hours rested on “unverifiable information or methodology that you still fail to explain or provide.” She called it “an emergency of the DOJ’s creation.” According to CBS News, Weber also rejected an earlier, unsubstantiated administration claim that California had 190,000 noncitizens on its voter rolls.
Governor Gavin Newsom called the lawsuit an attempt to “suppress California voters just three weeks before Election Day.” He said California would defend its elections. The administration has maintained that its efforts are aimed at identifying ineligible voters; California officials dispute the basis for its claims.
The dispute is part of a wider fight over voter records. According to CBS News, the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division has filed 31 lawsuits seeking unredacted state voter rolls. The division has said it wants accurate voter lists and has acknowledged plans to share the records with Homeland Security to screen for noncitizens. CBS News reported that the department has lost 26 of those cases and has not secured a legal victory in them.
Al Jazeera reported that a federal judge this month ruled the department had unlawfully sought state voter rolls to check against a federal immigration database. It also reported that the Supreme Court rejected an administration effort in September to restrict mail-in ballots for the November 3 elections. The Justice Department’s new suit asks a court to intervene directly in California’s counting of ballots whose voters it has flagged.
Be First to Comment