The letters mark a new escalation in the legal dispute between California and President Trump’s Justice Department. The conflict has increasingly centered on the department’s effort to identify and eliminate noncitizen voting ahead of the midterm elections. Research shows that illegal voting by non-U.S. citizens is extremely rare, difficult to establish and has not been shown to affect election outcomes.
Earlier this month, the federal government sued Los Angeles County and the California secretary of state, seeking to prevent them from counting ballots cast by more than 20,000 people it describes as “likely” noncitizen voters. A hearing in that case is scheduled for Tuesday.
On Friday, the Trump administration asked the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals to intervene in the lawsuit before the district judge assigned to the case could issue a ruling. The administration set a deadline of Saturday for the requested action.
The L.A. County registrar’s office said at least 18 California counties have now received similar letters. The counties were given 48 hours to provide identifying information linked to ballots the federal government believes were illegally submitted by noncitizens who registered to vote. Officials were also instructed to set aside ballots when citizenship could not be verified.
“Any election official who knowingly processes the ballot of a noncitizen is opening themselves to legal jeopardy,” said Bill Essayli, the first assistant U.S. attorney.
The Justice Department is asking counties for records on voters it suspects are noncitizens, including Social Security numbers, identification details, registration documents and other information.
According to a letter sent to San Bernardino County election officials, the records would allow federal and state authorities to quickly evaluate each person suspected of illegally registering to vote. The government’s list reportedly includes 1,133 people from the Inland Southern California county.
California’s secretary of state and the Los Angeles County registrar have rejected the federal demands. In court filings, California attorneys warned that complying could delay vote certification and damage confidence in the November midterms. They also argued that the federal data is unreliable and that the requests could disenfranchise eligible citizens.
Voting is already underway in California, where the state’s more than 23 million registered voters received mail ballots earlier this month. In court filings, the state said more than 330,000 mail-in ballots had already been counted.
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Friday’s letters followed a statewide federal enforcement operation earlier in the week. Authorities charged 28 people from the list of 20,000 with illegally registering to vote. Some also face accusations of voting unlawfully and providing false information on naturalization documents, offenses that could carry yearslong prison sentences.
The Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division has filed 31 lawsuits seeking unredacted copies of state voter rolls. The division initially said the goal was to ensure that states maintained accurate voter lists, but it has acknowledged plans to share the information with the Department of Homeland Security to screen the rolls for noncitizens.
In July, Harmeet Dhillon, the assistant attorney general overseeing the Civil Rights Division, sent letters to all 50 states warning that they could face criminal action if they knowingly allowed noncitizens to remain on their voter rolls.
The Justice Department has lost 26 of those cases so far and has not secured a legal victory in any of them.
“This is NOT A DRILL: Donald Trump and Todd Blanche are trying to interfere in California elections,” Democratic California Sen. Alex Padilla said in a statement Friday. “Trump’s DOJ has not provided any evidence for their claims of massive voter fraud. They’ve admitted that the data they point to is inaccurate and unreliable. No matter how many lawsuits they file or how many election officials they threaten, they do not have the authority to interfere.”
