The US Department of Justice is demanding that California segregate ballots linked to about 20,000 people it claims are “likely” non-citizens, but an initial review by Los Angeles County officials has found the federal list may be unreliable.
The demand is at the centre of a legal dispute between the Trump administration and California over the state’s voter rolls. California and local officials told a court that investigating the names so close to the election would be unfeasible and could breach federal and state election laws.
“At best, this litigation is a reckless political stunt,” the state said in a court filing submitted on Tuesday. “At worst, it threatens to disenfranchise thousands of Californians this election.”
The Justice Department supplied Los Angeles County with a thumb drive containing the names last week. County officials initially refused to open it, citing the security risk of connecting an unknown device to a government computer, before the department sent the same information by email.
Of the roughly 20,000 names, 7,035 had addresses in Los Angeles County, according to a separate filing by Dean Logan, the county’s registrar. Some names appeared more than once.
County staff reviewed a sample of 200 records to assess the quality of the data. Monica Flores, the assistant registrar-recorder, said the preliminary findings indicated that the list was “unreliable”.
Among records where a place of birth had been meaningfully recorded, 38.9 per cent indicated that the person had been born in the United States, which Flores described as “strong evidence of citizenship”. The county said the review was continuing.
The California Secretary of State’s online voter registration system asks applicants for their place of birth, although providing the information is not compulsory. With only extremely narrow exceptions, people born in the US automatically acquire citizenship.
The county’s filing said 112 of the 200 sampled registrations had been cancelled or were inactive, while about 70 per cent of those reviewed had no voting history.
The Justice Department has defended its approach while acknowledging that mistakes may have been made. Trent McCotter, the acting deputy attorney general, said on Monday: “There may be some names on there who it turns out ultimately are citizens, we’re not perfect. And that’s why we’ve asked California to cooperate with us.”
In a statement, DOJ deputy press secretary Kiersten Pels said California could not “facilitate the violation of federal law”. She said the department had asked the state to independently verify the citizenship of anyone on the list whose ballot had been cast, but that California had refused.
The department also announced criminal charges against 28 people on Monday. All were legal permanent residents, commonly known as green-card holders, and the cases involved allegations that they had illegally registered to vote or voted in US elections.
One of those charged, 68-year-old Kamlesh Shah, told a Sacramento television station that he believed he was entitled to vote because he had a Real ID. He said he was distressed by the case and hoped to find a lawyer to have the charges dismissed.
Research cited in the court dispute indicates that when non-citizens do vote, the cases more often involve green-card holders who misunderstand the rules rather than deliberate fraud.
