DOJ sues California to block mail ballots from voters flagged as 'likely noncitizens'
With midterms three weeks away, the Justice Department is asking a federal judge to freeze ballots from voters it identifies as probable noncitizens — a list California says it was never actually given.
The Justice Department sued California on Thursday, asking a federal judge in Los Angeles to prevent the state from counting mail-in ballots cast by voters the federal government has identified as 'likely noncitizens' — a demand California officials say they cannot act on because the government never actually handed over a usable list.
The lawsuit, filed just 48 hours after acting Deputy Attorney General Trent McCotter gave California a two-day deadline to review the names and segregate any returned ballots, targets Secretary of State Shirley Weber and Los Angeles County Registrar Dean Logan. It asks the court to compel the state to set aside — not cancel — ballots from individuals on the Department of Homeland Security's list until their citizenship can be confirmed, ahead of the November midterm elections.
The problem, according to California officials: the list arrived on a password-protected thumb drive delivered to the LA County Clerk's office with the password written on a sticky note — and the office refused to open it.
We have not accessed the drive because doing so would conflict with established data privacy and information security protocols. We do not consider the device a secure medium. Additionally, the letter does not specify the number of individuals involved or describe the information contained in the records.— Dean Logan, LA County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk
California Secretary of State Shirley Weber said her office received McCotter's letter but noted that the federal government 'did not provide the list to our office.' She framed the lawsuit as part of a broader pattern of federal overreach.
The USDOJ's relentless efforts to unlawfully gain access to states' protected voter data and purge voter rolls serve only to cause chaos and fuel public distrust in our elections. California has robust state law requirements that only U.S. citizens can register to vote and that any non-eligible registrants are removed from the State's voter rolls.— Shirley Weber, California Secretary of State
The Justice Department has insisted it is not seeking a voter-roll purge or the cancellation of votes — only a hold on specific ballots while citizenship is verified. The suit also represents a deliberate legal pivot: rather than relying on the Civil Rights Division, which has filed 31 lawsuits seeking unredacted voter rolls from states and lost 26 of them without a single legal victory, Thursday's complaint was brought by senior officials in the deputy attorney general's office and rests on the federal supremacy clause, arguing the government has an obligation to prevent noncitizens from voting in federal elections, according to ABC News.
How solid is the underlying list? That remains an open question. In a comparable episode, the Department of Homeland Security sent Nevada a list of 185 individuals it claimed were potential noncitizens on the voter rolls; Nevada reviewed every name and found each person was a lawful citizen, according to ABC News. No ruling has been issued in the California case.
The broader context: since President Trump took office, the Justice Department has criminally charged more than 100 people with voter fraud-related crimes. Experts across multiple studies have found that incidents of voter fraud are minimal and have not been numerous enough to affect the outcome of an election. A Reuters data analysis published last month found that states may have added more than 30,000 self-declared noncitizens to voter rolls since 2000 due to software glitches and clerical errors during driver's license processing — a figure small relative to the roughly 174 million registered voters counted in the 2024 election, according to Census data cited by CBS News.
Why it matters — A federal judge's ruling could determine whether tens of thousands of California ballots are counted in the November 3 midterms — and set a precedent for how far the federal government can intervene in state election administration.
⚠ Not yet confirmed
- Similar letters were also mailed to other California counties beyond LA.
- ~20,000 / roughly 20,000 specific voter count (unsupported by sources)
Sources differ on Whether the federal list identifies genuine noncitizens: DOJ says the ~20,000 names are 'likely noncitizens' based on DHS data warranting ballot segregation. (abcnews.com) vs California officials say the data is unverified; a comparable DHS list in Nevada turned out to contain zero actual noncitizens. (abcnews.com)
Reported by pbs.org, cbsnews.com, abcnews.com, nytimes.com, politico.com
