The U.S. Department of Justice has filed an emergency motion asking a federal court to order California election officials, including Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder Dean Logan, to set aside mail-in ballots from more than 20,000 voters the federal government believes are not U.S. citizens, and to withhold counting those ballots until citizenship can be verified.
The motion, filed Monday, comes in a lawsuit the Trump administration brought last week against the State of California, which alleges state officials are knowingly permitting noncitizens to vote. The same day, federal prosecutors announced criminal charges against 28 foreign nationals living in California who allegedly registered to vote fraudulently; most of them are accused of actually casting ballots in at least one election. The effort, called Operation Protect the Vote, involves all four U.S. Attorney’s Offices in California, including the Central District, which covers Los Angeles.
Acting Deputy Attorney General Trent McCotter said all 28 people charged Monday appeared on a list of more than 20,000 names the DOJ had previously given to California Secretary of State Shirley Weber and to Logan. The department had asked the state to stop sending ballots to anyone on the list who hadn’t already received one, to set aside ballots already returned by people on the list, and to verify the citizenship status of everyone named before any of their ballots were tabulated.
California officials declined those requests. McCotter said the state had argued it needed more information about how the federal government obtained the voter roll and what methodology was used to compile the list before it would act.
McCotter described the process: DHS cross-referenced California’s public voter roll with other government databases, including State Department and passport records, Social Security Administration data, and immigration files, removing anyone with evidence of citizenship, including derivative citizenship through a parent or naturalization. The remaining names were then manually reviewed by a separate part of DHS. McCotter said the review left
