DOJ lawsuit says noncitizens ‘sent mail-in ballots’ for November midterm
McCotter gave the Los Angeles County Clerk and the California Secretary of State two days to confirm they were reviewing the names on the federal flash drive and to segregate any possible ballots that may have been returned from individuals listed on the device, according to the complaint.
The thumb drive was delivered to the Los Angeles County Clerk’s office with the password written on a sticky note attached to it. The Los Angeles County Clerk said separately it would refuse to access the device “because doing so would conflict with established data privacy and information security protocols.”
On Thursday, the Justice Department filed its lawsuit against California, accusing the state of declining to review a list of approximately 20,000 alleged non-citizens the Trump administration says were sent mail-in ballots for November’s midterm election. According to the lawsuit, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services conducted a “multiagency and multilevel review” of state voter and federal citizenship data “as part of an investigation into unlawful voting.” The agency determined with “high confidence” that around 20,000 “likely noncitizens” are registered to vote in California.
California officials have called the underlying request legally baseless and a last-ditch White House effort to intervene in the midterm election. They noted that the Trump administration has lost more than two dozen court challenges over the past year seeking to force states to release their voter rolls.
Governor Newsom characterized the federal action in a written statement as “a sad, desperate attempt by Trump to use his politicized Justice Department to try to suppress California voters just three weeks before Election Day.”
“The courts have made clear that the federal government has no role in how a state carries out its election process, and now, in the middle of Californians voting, they have asked local officials — who do a damn good job defending democracy — to violate federal law,” Newsom said.
The two-day deadline McCotter imposed lapsed without the Los Angeles County Clerk accessing the device. The Justice Department’s lawsuit now puts the question of whether California must review the flash drive’s contents before a federal judge.