The Trump administration on Thursday sued California over its handling of voter fraud claims, asking a federal court to immediately bar the state from counting ballots from about 20,000 voters statewide — many in Los Angeles County — whom the administration alleges are “likely noncitizens.” The lawsuit is highly unusual, particularly given that California voters have already begun voting in the Nov. 3 midterms via mail ballots, experts said. It’s also highly inappropriate and based on questionable federal data that has proved wildly inaccurate in other states, state officials said. We will defend free and fair elections in the Golden State and call out every authoritarian attempt to undermine our democracy.” U.S.
Todd Blanche, in his own statement, defended the lawsuit. Citizenship and Immigration Services conducted a “multiagency and multilevel review” of state voter and federal citizenship data and determined with “high confidence” that around 20,000 “likely noncitizens” are registered to vote in the state. It then forwarded those names to Homeland Security Investigations, which conducted its own investigation and concluded the same, the lawsuit says.
The lawsuit comes two days after Acting Deputy Atty. Trent McCotter wrote to California Secretary of State Shirley Weber and Dean Logan, head of the L.A. County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk’s office, giving them 48 hours to set aside the same ballots in order to investigate those voters’ citizenship status.
McCotter had said the Trump administration would be forced to file for emergency relief in the courts if Weber and Logan did not comply. The lawsuit comes about three months after Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin wrote his own letter to Weber, alleging that there may be more than 190,000 noncitizens registered to vote in California. The lawsuit makes no mention of that prior estimate, or why Homeland Security’s initial estimate was so much larger than its current estimate.
It does say that USCIS identifying with “high confidence” that a voter is a likely noncitizen “means that the match between voter information on the voting roll and USCIS’ internal records is strong and consistent based on multiple identifiers that support a strong identity link.” It also said, “The Federal Government notified California months ago that numerous noncitizens may be registered to vote in California. Despite knowing that California must send vote-by-mail ballots to every registered voter, the State made no serious attempt to work with the Federal Government to determine whether noncitizens are registered to vote.” The Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to a request for more information as to how the 190,000 figure dropped to 20,000. In a letter back to McCotter, Weber noted both figures, and accused the Trump administration of pushing forward to disenfranchise voters at the last minute before the midterms based on shoddy data work and no certainty that those voters are ineligible.
And as one court recently noted, the federal government’s citizenship records are ‘known to be unreliable,’” Weber wrote, referring to case brought against the Justice Department by the organization Common Cause. However, after working with the State of Nevada, DHS officials failed to establish that a single non-citizen was on the voter rolls.” Weber called it “remarkable” that the Justice Department would demand that her office “review and confirm the citizenship status of each of the approximately 20,000 individuals on the list on the eve of an election and within a mere 48 hours” despite providing no clear evidence that those individuals are wrongly registered. Bill Essayli, the lead federal prosecutor in Los Angeles, posted about the lawsuit on X, noting the 48-window given to Weber and Logan had lapsed and writing, “Time is up for California.” “This is not political or controversial,” he wrote.
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