DOJ has brought around 60 noncitizen-voting prosecutions in recent months
The Justice Department has not prevailed in any of the voter-records cases it has brought against states under President Trump — to date, 26 federal judges and an appeals court panel have sided with the states, and none with the administration, according to the Wall Street Journal.
The agency’s record was extended Thursday by a new lawsuit filed in federal court in central California. The case asks a judge to issue an injunction stopping California from tabulating mail-in ballots from 20,000 individuals the Trump administration identifies as “likely noncitizens” until each person’s citizenship status can be verified.
The Wall Street Journal characterized the filing as “a significant extension of the administration’s efforts to expand federal control over elections.” The filing comes less than three weeks before a midterm election that will determine control of Congress for the remainder of President Trump’s term. Voting is already under way in California, where every active registered voter receives a mail-in ballot. The state is one of eight that allow all elections to be conducted entirely by mail. Trump has long railed against mail-in voting, saying it is open to manipulation, and in June cast doubt on California’s primary results, focusing on the state’s slow vote-counting process.
Attorney General Todd Blanche said after the filing that “We provided California an opportunity to self correct its records” and that “California has refused to comply.”
California Secretary of State Shirley Weber, who is named as a defendant in the lawsuit, has been trading increasingly angry letters with the Justice Department in recent days. Weber said a federal list of approximately 20,000 names “lacks both the detail and function to be of any investigative use,” and that the federal government has never explained its basis for suspecting that people on the list are noncitizens. In a reply sent shortly before the lawsuit was filed, Weber said, “This is an emergency of the DOJ’s creation.”
The Trump administration has alleged for months that some states including California have noncitizens on their voter rolls. Trump and his top officials have placed the possibility of noncitizen voting at the center of the president’s claim during a prime-time address earlier this year that the U.S. election system is “so broken and vulnerable that no one can possibly defend it.” The administration has alleged that hundreds of thousands of ineligible people are registered to vote around the country and could cast ballots in November.
State and local officials, who run elections under the Constitution, say those numbers of inaccurate registrations are overstated, that they scour their own voter rolls, and that documented instances of noncitizens casting ballots are rare. The Justice Department has prioritized prosecutions of noncitizens voting, and has brought around 60 cases in recent months.
The Department of Homeland Security has launched several efforts to root out noncitizens who may be improperly registered to vote, using federal records in its possession and those of other agencies, such as the Social Security Administration. The Supreme Court has given the greenlight for DHS to deploy a new database intended to check voters’ citizenship. Voting-rights groups that sued the Trump administration argue that the database is flawed and frequently produces inaccurate results.
States compile and maintain voter rolls, so only they have complete information about who is registered and casts ballots. The federal government has access to redacted state voter rolls and, based on that information, cannot definitively say whether the names are of U.S. citizens.
The Trump administration has previously sued 30 states, including California, to try to obtain complete voter records. To date, 26 federal judges and an appeals court panel have sided with the states, and none with the administration.