The Justice Department has ordered California officials to review a federal list of possible noncitizens who may have received mail ballots, and to hold those ballots until citizenship is confirmed.
Acting Deputy Attorney General Trent McCotter sent an Oct. 13 letter directing California elections officials to examine names the federal government believes may have gotten vote-by-mail ballots for the November election despite not being U.S. citizens.
CBS News reported the letter went to the Los Angeles County clerk’s office, with similar letters mailed to other counties across the state. Officials got a password-protected thumb drive carrying the list and a hard 48-hour clock to act.
The demand is straightforward. Confirm citizenship. Segregate questioned ballots. Do not hand out unsent ones until the status is clear.
McCotter did not order those ballots destroyed. He ordered them set aside.
“For individuals whom you cannot independently confirm citizenship status, we request that you immediately instruct the appropriate elections official to segregate, not cancel, those individuals' vote-by-mail ballots until their citizenship status can be determined,” McCotter wrote.
"For individuals whom you cannot independently confirm citizenship status, we request that you immediately instruct the appropriate elections official to segregate, not cancel, those individuals' vote-by-mail ballots until their citizenship status can be determined,"
He added a second instruction for ballots still sitting in county offices.
"If individuals on the list have not yet been sent a vote-by-mail ballot, take all immediate and reasonable steps to not provide a ballot to those individuals until we confirm their citizenship status,"
Los Angeles County’s Registrar-Recorder office confirmed it received the letter. CBS News said it contacted California’s secretary of state for comment.
Just The News reported the Justice Department framed the same demand to California Secretary of State Shirley Weber and warned it would seek emergency relief if officials missed the 48-hour window.
The thumb drive listed people in Los Angeles County believed to be likely noncitizens who were sent mail-in ballots. Returned ballots tied to those names were to be kept separate and left uncounted until citizenship could be confirmed.
The New York Post reported matching letters went to Weber and to Los Angeles County Registrar Dean Logan. McCotter’s warning was blunt: if the process was not in place in time, the United States would “have no choice but to seek emergency relief.”
Department officials underscored the basic rule of federal elections.
"This should not be controversial, as the criminal statute is clear: only American citizens may vote in federal elections. It is a federal crime for noncitizens to vote in U.S. elections, and the DOJ is asking California to ensure that is not occurring,"
The October letter did not appear in a vacuum. In July, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin told California’s secretary of state the government believed noncitizens were listed on the state’s voter rolls.
That same month, Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division Harmeet Dhillon sent letters to all 50 states. Those letters warned of criminal action if states knowingly left noncitizens on their rolls.
The Civil Rights Division has also filed 31 lawsuits seeking unredacted voter rolls from states. It has lost 26 of those cases and, so far, has not recorded a legal win. The department has said it wants clean lists and has acknowledged plans to share data with DHS to screen for noncitizens.
Since President Trump took office, the Justice Department has criminally charged more than 100 people with voter fraud-related crimes.
A Reuters data analysis published last month found states may have added more than 30,000 self-declared noncitizens to voter rolls since 2000. The reporting pointed to software glitches and clerical errors tied to driver’s licenses and state IDs, not a claim of a single coordinated plot.
About 174 million people were registered to vote in the 2024 election, according to Census figures cited in the coverage. Even a relatively small number of improper registrations can matter when ballots are already in the mail and counties are racing toward Election Day.
Federal law is not ambiguous on the core point. Noncitizens may not vote in federal elections. When a list of possible mismatches lands on a county desk weeks before November voting, the responsible step is to check the names, hold the questioned ballots, and finish the citizenship review before those votes are counted.
California’s officials now have the list, the thumb drive, and the clock. Clean rolls are not a partisan favor. They are the minimum standard for an election run under the law.
