California Ballot Lawsuit: DOJ Targets 20,000 Votes

The U.S. Justice Department sued California on Thursday in an attempt to block the state from counting mail-in ballots from more than 20,000 people the Trump administration says may not be U.S. citizens — a dramatic escalation of federal involvement in elections less than three weeks before the Nov. 3 midterms.

The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, asks a federal judge to order the state to set aside the flagged ballots until the voters’ citizenship status can be verified, according to USA Today and the Wall Street Journal.

What the California Ballot Lawsuit Seeks

In a 15-page filing, Justice Department lawyer Andrew Darlington asked the court to stop California from “presently tabulating vote-by-mail ballots from likely noncitizens in the upcoming federal election until the voter’s citizenship status can be determined.”

The filing says the court should order state officials to set aside vote-by-mail ballots from people the federal government identified as likely noncitizens — and either independently verify their citizenship or do so in collaboration with federal officials.

The department’s identification methodology: Homeland Security Investigations and other federal agencies compared California voter-registration records with federal immigration data. The lawsuit says U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services identified the voters with “high confidence” after a “multiagency and multilevel review,” and that HSI reached the same conclusion in its own review.

The 48-Hour Ultimatum

On Oct. 13, acting Deputy Attorney General R. Trent McCotter delivered a list of more than 20,000 names to Los Angeles County election officials on a password-protected thumb drive, giving the state 48 hours — until noon Thursday — to set those ballots aside for citizenship review, and to withhold any remaining unsent ballots until eligibility was confirmed.

Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder Dean Logan declined to comply, citing concerns about the security of the USB drive and the lack of supporting documentation. California Secretary of State Shirley Weber said the Justice Department had not provided the voter list to her office and called the list one that “lacks both the detail and function to be of any investigative use.”

“This is an emergency of the DOJ’s creation,” Weber said in a reply sent shortly before the lawsuit was filed.

Clashing Statements From Both Sides

• Attorney General Todd Blanche: “State-facilitated voter fraud is unacceptable in the United States of America. If found responsible in a court of law, the State of California will have seriously undermined confidence in our electoral system.”
• Bill Essayli, first assistant U.S. attorney in Los Angeles: “We are taking California to federal court to demand that the votes of American citizens not be diluted by noncitizens.”
• Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin: Called the findings a preliminary analysis and said the “analysis and review remain ongoing.”
• Secretary of State Shirley Weber: Called the federal action “unprecedented” and said it threatened the voting rights of thousands of California residents “based on unverifiable information or methodology.”

A Widening Federal Elections Fight

The suit is the latest front in a multi-state campaign. Earlier, the Department of Homeland Security said its own verification found noncitizens illegally listed on voter rolls in four states — California, New Jersey, Nevada and Pennsylvania.

But the federal methodology has faced scrutiny: in a separate effort, DHS provided Nevada with 185 names of individuals it believed were noncitizens. Nevada officials investigating those names determined that all of them were actually citizens.

Meanwhile, a backlog of 600,000 voter registration applications has Texas election workers scrambling to process them before the deadline, according to reporting this week, and Senate Democrats announced they will send 100 election observers to nine states in a first-of-its-kind election protection program.

What Happens Next

Voting is already underway in California, where every active registered voter receives a mail-in ballot. The state is one of eight that allow elections to be conducted entirely by mail — a system Trump has long railed against, saying it is open to manipulation.

The court will now decide whether to grant the emergency order to halt tabulation of the flagged ballots — a ruling that could affect counting timelines in the nation’s largest state and set a precedent for the Nov. 3 midterm elections, which will determine control of Congress for the remainder of Trump’s term.

This is a developing story. This article will be updated as the court case progresses.