The Justice Department sued California for leaving more than 20,000 suspected noncitizens on voter rolls and already mailing them ballots, a move state Democrats call federal overreach.
Federal officials took California to court Thursday after the state refused to scrub its voter rolls of more than 20,000 people the government says are likely noncitizens who already received mail-in ballots for the midterms.
The 16-page complaint names California Secretary of State Dr. Shirley Weber and Los Angeles Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk Dean Logan. It lands less than three weeks before Election Day, with ballots already in voters’ hands across the Golden State.
The Department of Homeland Security matched voter-roll names against federal data and flagged the list. Under California law, registered voters automatically get federal ballots. That means thousands of those flagged names were mailed ballots in early October for state, local, and federal races.
The complaint also says California does not warn noncitizens that casting a ballot in a federal election is a federal crime. It further alleges the state is lax on signature checks and often accepts ballots marked with an “X” instead of a full name.
The Washington Examiner reported the lawsuit followed DOJ letters sent two days earlier to Weber and Logan asking them to review the suspected noncitizen names tied to mail-in ballots.
The New York Post added that federal officials gave Los Angeles County a password-protected thumb drive of the names and a short window to act, remove noncitizens from the rolls and sequester any returned ballots from the flagged voters. Only U.S. citizens may vote in federal elections; noncitizen voting is a federal crime.
First Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli for the Central District of California put the refusal in plain terms.
"California election officials were given an opportunity to remove noncitizens from their voter rolls and to sequester ballots returned from suspected ineligible voters. They refused."
Essayli continued:
"We are taking California to federal court to demand that the votes of American citizens not be diluted by noncitizens."
Attorney General Todd Blanche framed the stakes the same way. “State-facilitated voter fraud is unacceptable in the United States of America,” he said. If a court finds California responsible, he added, the state “will have seriously undermined confidence in our electoral system and violated laws that protect our nation’s representative system of government.”
DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin said the department’s review is ongoing and called the situation “completely unacceptable.” Even one noncitizen vote, he said, cancels out the vote of an American citizen and undermines elections. DHS, he said, is committed to identifying unlawful voting and ensuring only eligible American citizens elect the country’s leaders.
California’s Democratic leaders rejected the case on timing and federal authority. Gov. Gavin Newsom labeled the filing a “sad” and “desperate attempt” by President Donald Trump to use the DOJ to suppress California voters just three weeks before the November midterms.
Newsom said the courts have made clear the federal government has no role in how a state runs its elections. He claimed the mid-voting request asked local officials, “who do a d*** good job defending democracy”, to violate federal law. He called it a “totally unprecedented request that should scare the h*** out of every American” and said California would keep running “free and fair elections” while calling out what he termed an “authoritarian” using “every play in the dictator’s playbook.”
California Attorney General Rob Bonta struck a similar note on X the same day the suit dropped.
"Mail ballots are already in most voters’ hands, and Election Day is less than three weeks away. Every count, recount, hand count, lawsuit, and audit has found that there’s no widespread voter fraud in the U.S. The Trump Admin’s last-minute demands are meritless, and we look forward to making our case in court."
The Daily Caller reported the clash as ballots were already circulating and Election Day loomed less than three weeks out.
The core dispute is not abstract. DHS analysis put more than 20,000 likely noncitizens on the rolls. State law then pushed federal ballots out the door in early October. Federal officials say they offered California a chance to pull those names and hold related returns. State officials declined and now face a federal lawsuit instead.
Whether the flagged registrants are confirmed noncitizens, how many of those ballots come back, and what a federal court orders next remain open. What is not open is the basic rule: federal elections are for citizens. When a state leaves tens of thousands of suspected noncitizens on the rolls and mails them ballots, citizen votes are the ones put at risk.
Election integrity is not optional theater three weeks out. If California won’t clean the rolls when handed the list, federal court is the right place to force the issue before another citizen’s ballot is canceled out.
