Justice Department Orders California to Review Voter Lists Over Noncitizen Ballot Concerns

What Happened

The Justice Department has ordered California election offices to review a list of people the federal government believes may have received mail-in ballots for the upcoming November election despite not being U.S. citizens. Acting Deputy Attorney General Trent McCotter sent the letter on October 13, giving officials a 48-hour deadline to check the citizenship status of individuals whose names were provided on a password-protected thumb drive. Officials were instructed to tell election workers to segregate, but not cancel, the vote-by-mail ballots of anyone whose citizenship cannot be independently confirmed. They were also told to stop sending mail-in ballots to anyone on the list who has not yet received one, until their status is checked.

Official Responses And Actions

A spokesperson for the Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder confirmed receiving the letter, which was sent to the county clerk's office as well as other counties in the state. The letter follows a July warning from Department of Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin to California's secretary of state about noncitizens on voter rolls. The Trump administration has pushed blue states on voter registration lists, with the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division filing 31 lawsuits to get unredacted voter rolls. Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division Harmeet Dhillon also sent letters to all 50 states in July to threaten criminal action if they knowingly allowed noncitizens to stay on voter rolls. The Justice Department has lost 26 of those cases and won zero to date, leading the agency to use public voter lists and other investigative steps instead. Since President Trump took office, the department has criminally charged over 100 people with voter fraud crimes.

Context

Federal law prohibits noncitizens from voting in federal elections, and state election officials maintain voter rolls to ensure only eligible voters participate. Studies by experts have consistently shown that voter fraud incidents are very rare and do not change election outcomes. Meanwhile, a Reuters data analysis showed that software glitches and clerical errors during driver's license and state ID processing may have added over 30,000 self-declared noncitizens to voter rolls across states since 2000, though this figure remains small compared to the 174 million registered voters recorded in the 2024 election by Census data.