Trump administration sues California over noncitizens on voter rolls

Meanwhile, the administration of United States President Donald Trump has sued the state of California after the state missed a deadline to review a list of registered noncitizen voters sent to authorities.

Key points

• According to the Election Assistance Commission, a bipartisan administration agency, around 30 percent of all ballots cast in the 2024 elections were sent by mail.
• Weber remarked she was informed that the lists provided to local office-holders include the names of roughly 20, 000 individuals.
• Trump has long falsely asserted that noncitizen voting cost him the 2020 election, blaming it on Democrats, despite the problem being a particularly rare occurrence.
• In September, the US Supreme Court rejected a Trump administration effort to restrict mail-in ballots for the November 3 elections.
• "Courts have made clear the federal government has no role in running state elections, " Newsom remarked in an official note.

In the lawsuit, filed on Thursday in a US District Court in California, Department of Justice (DOJ) authorities asked the court to prevent the state from counting mail-in ballots from voters on a list shared with the state that it stated contained 20, 000 noncitizens. The agency remarked it had attempted to "work collaboratively" with California to identify noncitizens registered to vote in the state, but "California made no serious effort to do so".

Meanwhile, the move follows a 48-hour deadline the DOJ offered California in letters sent to office-holders in a number of counties in the state on Tuesday, threatening further action if they did not review lists of allegedly ineligible voters the agency remarked it had shared.

California Secretary of State Shirley Weber, the top state official tasked with administering elections, responded to the letters, saying in a three-page letter that she wanted to "set the record straight" on events that transpired since July. The senior California official maintains that the administration is 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".

Weber remarked she was informed that the lists provided to local office-holders include the names of roughly 20, 000 individuals. Weber remarked no list was ever sent to her office. The department previously remarked it suspected "thousands" of registered voters of being noncitizens, and a lawsuit filed earlier Thursday by the Justice Department put the number at "tens of thousands".

"Despite failing to send the list of alleged non-citizens to my office, you demand that we request transmittal of the list, review and confirm the citizenship status of each of the approximately 20, 000 individuals on the list on the eve of an election and within a mere 48 hours, " she wrote. "This is an emergency of the DOJ's creation."

In an official note on Wednesday, election authorities in Los Angeles County, one of the county offices that received the ultimatum from the DOJ, pointed out the threat was issued just 21 days before midterm elections. The county statement remarked it had received a thumb drive with the letter and a handwritten note with what appeared to be a password, but it would not attempt to access the drive as "we do not consider the device a secure medium".

Meanwhile, the county office remarked maintaining accurate voter lists was "a fundamental responsibility for our office" and that state laws clearly require that removing individuals be "based on verifiable information".

Trump has repeatedly levelled the false claim that sizeable numbers of noncitizens. This person are legally not eligible to vote in federal elections, are casting ballots in Democratic-led states, including in California. State authorities, including in California, have stated the number of such voters is negligible and that the scale of the difficulty does not warrant intervention just weeks before elections, scheduled for November 3.

California Governor Gavin Newsom has sharply rebuked the DOJ lawsuit against his state, calling it a "sad, desperate attempt by" Trump to "suppress California voters just three weeks before Election Day".

"Courts have made clear the federal government has no role in running state elections, " Newsom remarked in an official note. "We will defend free and fair elections in the Golden State and call out every authoritarian attempt to undermine our democracy."

Trump has long falsely asserted that noncitizen voting cost him the 2020 election, blaming it on Democrats, despite the problem being a particularly rare occurrence. Courts have pushed back on Trump.

Earlier this month, a federal judge in Florida ruled that a federal law criminalising voting by noncitizens was unconstitutional, delivering a major setback for Trump administration efforts to pursue such cases against individuals.

Meanwhile, the court ruled that, under the US Constitution, only individual states have the authority to set voter qualifications, and that each one had already criminalised such voting by anyone who was not a citizen. Thus, it was up to the state to prosecute such individuals. The DOJ has at least 45 such cases pending nationwide, where the accused could now raise the same objection brought up in the Florida ruling.

Another federal judge ruled this month that the DOJ unlawfully sought state voter rolls for cross-checking them against a controversial federal immigration database to identify ineligible voters. The Trump administration has often touted the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) database, but numerous reports have discovered it inaccurate and capable of flagging citizens as noncitizens. Forcing states to employ such a database would be unconstitutional, the judge stated.

In September, the US Supreme Court rejected a Trump administration effort to restrict mail-in ballots for the November 3 elections. It trump argued were especially susceptible to misuse by noncitizens since states were failing to verify who was sending them.

Two dozen states, led by Democrats, filed lawsuits against the Trump administration over attempts to limit mail-in voting, including an executive order directing federal agencies such as the US Postal Service not to handle mail-in ballots without verifying the eligibility of those casting them.

According to the Election Assistance Commission, a bipartisan administration agency, around 30 percent of all ballots cast in the 2024 elections were sent by mail. Mail-in ballots are even more widely applied in numerous western states such as California.

In short, trump administration sues California over noncitizens on voter rolls is the central thread here, and readers can expect follow-up reporting as the picture becomes clearer.