DOJ gives California 48 hours on noncitizen ballots

Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder Dean Logan received a password-protected thumb drive from the Justice Department on Tuesday and declined to open it. The password was handwritten on a blue post-it note attached to the letter. “We do not consider the device a secure medium,” Logan said. He added that “the letter does not specify the number of individuals involved or describe the information contained in the records.”

Acting Deputy Attorney General R. Trent McCotter signed letters that day to Logan and to California Secretary of State Shirley Weber. The department set a deadline of noon Eastern time Thursday, October 15 — 48 hours — for officials to review a federal list of people it believes are likely noncitizens who were sent mail ballots for the November 3 midterm election. “If you cannot implement this process by then, given the ongoing federal election, the United States will have no choice but to seek emergency relief,” McCotter wrote. “Allowing noncitizens to vote cancels citizen votes.”

The instructions were specific. Officials were to verify citizenship, withhold ballots not yet sent to names on the list, and segregate — not cancel — ballots from anyone whose status could not be confirmed. Returned ballots were not to be counted while status remained unresolved. California began mailing ballots to voters on October 5. Voting is already underway.

Department of Justice spokeswoman Kiersten Pels stated the legal premise directly. “This should not be controversial, as the criminal statute is clear: only American citizens may vote in federal elections.” She said the department “will take all necessary legal action to protect election integrity and ensure compliance with federal law.” Federal criminal law bars noncitizens from voting in federal elections. Citizenship is the threshold for the federal franchise. The citizen who registers and casts a lawful ballot has a direct stake in that line being enforced before unresolved ballots are tabulated. McCotter’s letter asks California to check the flagged names and hold unresolved ballots aside while that work is done.

California Attorney General Rob Bonta denounced the demand at a Wednesday press conference. “I find it desperate. I find it embarrassing that this administration would engage in such conduct during an election,” Bonta said. He continued: “During an election, he now comes forward and purports to suggest that there are ineligible voters on the rolls in California. And so, you know, we have to understand who the messenger is, what they’ve said in the past — they have zero credibility.” Governor Gavin Newsom and Xavier Becerra posted public statements on X condemning the administration’s move. Justin Levitt, an NBC News contributor and former Justice Department attorney, said the federal government has no authority to compel California to comply. David Becker, a former federal prosecutor and executive director of the Center for Election Innovation and Research, questioned the timing, noting that California’s voter lists are public and that ballots had already gone out October 5. Corrin Rankin, chairwoman of the California Republican Party, called for an immediate response from state officials.

The record on earlier federal claims must be stated as the sources give it. In July and August, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin alleged 250,000 noncitizens registered in four states including California, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Nevada, according to CNN and CBS reporting, or 190,000 according to Axios. In Nevada, DHS initially claimed 15,900 noncitizen registrants and “confirmed” 185 through manual review; Nevada’s own review found all 185 were citizens, a conclusion DHS disputes. In New Jersey, DHS claimed 35,000 noncitizen voters; Gov. Sherrill said a software error caused about 6,600 mistaken registrations. In Pennsylvania, DHS had varying confidence levels on roughly 14,000 flagged voters, per Votebeat. Reuters reported more than 30,000 noncitizens added to voter rolls nationwide since 2000 because of software glitches and clerical errors. As of mid-September, about 1,600 DOJ, ICE and FBI cases related to illegal voting were ongoing.

Those figures do not establish how many names sit on the unopened Los Angeles drive, a number the letter itself did not give. They do show that noncitizens have been placed on voter rolls through error, that software failures have produced mistaken registrations in the thousands, and that federal investigators are pursuing illegal-voting cases in substantial volume. The statute Pels cited does not require a perfect national match list before officials act on a concrete set of flagged ballots already in the mail stream. McCotter asked for segregation and verification, not summary cancellation. That is an integrity step timed to an election in motion.

The Justice Department has sued 30 states and Washington, D.C., over refusal to turn over unredacted voter-roll data and has lost every case decided so far, including one involving California. That litigation history is part of the landscape. It does not repeal the citizenship requirement for federal elections, and it does not answer what a county registrar should do with names the department says it believes are likely noncitizens who were sent vote-by-mail ballots.

Logan’s objection is procedural and specific: the thumb drive is not treated as a secure medium, the letter supplies neither a headcount nor a description of the records, and county data-privacy protocols counsel against opening it. Accounts of Weber’s office said the Justice Department did not provide the list to the secretary of state. As of October 14, California officials had not publicly described steps matching the process McCotter demanded. Similar letters were reported to have gone to multiple counties; several Northern California counties told reporters they had not received them.