DOJ sues California over alleged non-citizens on voter rolls
The Justice Department filed suit against California Thursday accusing the state of failing to review a list of alleged non-citizens that President Donald Trump's administration claims were sent mail-in ballots for next month's midterm election, according to court records.
The lawsuit comes just 48 hours after a top Justice Department official demanded California voting officials access a password-protected thumb drive that it said contained thousands of names of potential non-citizens believed to be on the state's voter registration list.
The letters from acting Deputy Attorney General Trent McCotter were sent to the Los Angeles County Clerk and California Secretary of State on Tuesday, and gave a two-day deadline for the officials to confirm they were conducting a review and also moving to segregate any potential ballots that may have been returned from individuals whose names were on the thumb drive.
But officials in California characterized the request as legally baseless and a last-ditch effort by the Trump administration to intervene in the state's election process, despite facing more than two dozen straight losses in court over the past year in its efforts to compel states to hand over their voter rolls.
"The USDOJ's relentless efforts to unlawfully gain access to states' protected voter data and purge voter rolls serve only to cause chaos and fuel public distrust in our elections," California Secretary of State Shirley Weber said. "California has robust state law requirements that only U.S. citizens can register to vote and that any non-eligible registrants are removed from the State’s voter rolls. My office and California election officials remain committed -- as always -- to ensuring a fair and smooth 2026 General Election."
The LA County Clerk separately said in a statement they would refuse to access contents of the thumb drive -- which was delivered to the office with a password attached on a sticky note -- "because doing so would conflict with established data privacy and information security protocols."
"We do not consider the device a secure medium," LA County Clerk Dean Logan said in the statement. "Additionally, the letter does not specify the number of individuals involved or describe the information contained in the records."
The Justice Department contends in its lawsuit that it is not requesting a "purge" of the state's voter rolls or to cancel votes, and instead is asking a judge to compel the state to set aside ballots that are from individuals on its list of alleged "likely" non-citizens.
The lawsuit also marks a strategic shift for the department by declining to involve officials from the Civil Rights Division, which has suffered an unbroken string of legal defeats seeking voter rolls from states based on federal civil rights statutes.
Instead, Thursday's lawsuit was filed by senior officials in the deputy attorney general's office and hinges on the federal supremacy clause -- arguing that the department has an obligation to intervene to prevent the state from permitting non-citizens to vote in federal elections.
But it's not ultimately clear how many of the names identified by DOJ as "likely" non-citizens on the voter rolls may prove to be legitimate.
In a previous exchange with officials in Nevada, for instance, the state conducted a review of 185 individuals that the Department of Homeland Security claimed were potential non-citizens on the voter rolls only to determine that every individual on the list was a lawful citizen.
The lawsuit marks the latest effort by the Trump administration to sow doubt on the integrity of the upcoming elections by pushing claims that non-citizens will seek to vote in mass numbers -- despite evidence and criminal prosecution levels showing such instances remain rare.
