SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — The Trump administration sued California election officials Thursday, asking a judge to bar the state from counting mail-in ballots for next month’s midterm elections from people the federal government has identified as “likely” noncitizens until their immigration status can be confirmed.
The lawsuit comes after the Justice Department said California officials failed to meet a 48-hour deadline to review a password-protected thumb drive that contains a list of 20,000 names. The federal government says those are likely noncitizens who were sent ballots to participate in the Nov. 3 election, although the secretary of state said the administration has provided no evidence to support that claim. The state mails ballots to all registered voters.
The lawsuit follows a letter sent earlier this week by a top Justice Department official who threatened potential legal action if California didn’t comply.
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The federal government didn’t specify where the 20,000 voters were concentrated, but the list was sent directly to Los Angeles County Registrar Dean Logan on Tuesday, his office confirmed in a statement. His office said the list contained names of voters throughout California, not just Los Angeles, even though Logan is the only county election official named as a defendant in the lawsuit. He doesn’t have jurisdiction over ballots outside Los Angeles County.
In a statement Thursday, Logan said his office can’t withhold ballots or refuse to count them “based solely on unverified allegations.”
Over 23 million people are registered statewide, and there are a handful of competitive congressional races in other California districts that could determine which party has control of the U.S. House for the final two years of President Donald Trump’s term.
Expert says lawsuit could set stage for false election claims
California Secretary of State Shirley Weber said in a letter to the Justice Department that the federal government hasn’t provided evidence to support its allegation that 20,000 names on the state’s voter rolls are of noncitizens. She referenced an instance in which the federal government initially alleged nearly 16,000 possible noncitizens were listed on Nevada’s voter rolls, but the state determined that all the people flagged were, in fact, U.S. citizens.
She also noted that voting is already underway in the state. Weber, a Democrat, said the Justice Department was “demanding unprecedented measures that threaten thousands of Californians’ right to vote, based on unverifiable information or methodology that you still fail to explain or provide.”
California’s elections are in “full compliance” with federal law, she added.
David Becker, an election law expert who heads the Center for Election Innovation and Research, called the Justice Department’s lawsuit “fairly frivolous.”
“If they were seeking to work in good faith to clean up the voter list that they believed had issues, they would have done this months ago in a much different fashion,” Becker said. “However, it does raise questions as to whether or not the sole purpose of this is to set the stage for false claims about elections.”
List of alleged illegal voters delivered on a thumb drive
Logan said his office received the thumb drive along with a “hand written note providing a password” to access the list of alleged noncitizens on the voter rolls. He said he did not consider the thumb drive a secure device. The secretary of state’s office said the password was written “on a sticky note.”
