California sued by Justice Department over voter eligibility checks

The United States Department of Justice has launched a federal lawsuit against California, seeking to halt the counting of certain ballots in the upcoming midterm elections over claims that noncitizens might be registered to vote.

Filed in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, the legal action requests an injunction to stop state and local election workers from tabulating mail-in ballots cast by individuals flagged by federal authorities. The government wants California officials to isolate those specific ballots and confirm the citizenship of the voters before any of their votes are processed.

The lawsuit followed an ultimatum delivered earlier in the week to Los Angeles County election authorities. Federal officials delivered a USB thumb drive secured with a handwritten password, claiming it held the names of more than 20,000 registered individuals suspected of being noncitizens. The Justice Department demanded that local administrators verify the status of everyone on the drive and separate their ballots, giving the county just 48 hours to comply without clarifying how the names were selected.

Election officials in California firmly rejected the demand. Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder and County Clerk Dean Logan declined to process the information, citing security concerns regarding the physical USB device.

California Secretary of State Shirley Weber criticized the federal initiative, noting that the Justice Department had bypassed her office entirely with the data. Weber accused the department of attempting to bypass protections on voter information and force roll purges close to an election, arguing such measures undermine public trust and generate confusion.

The administration's efforts to identify potential noncitizen voters have faced skepticism following earlier scrutiny. Earlier in the year, the Department of Homeland Security asserted that hundreds of thousands of noncitizens could be registered across several states, including California and Nevada. However, after Homeland Security officials provided Nevada with a list of 185 individuals it believed were not citizens, state authorities investigated and discovered that every person on the list was indeed a U.S. citizen.

Legal scholars have raised statutory objections to the federal government's legal maneuvers. Under the National Voter Registration Act, federal law strictly restricts systematic purges of voter rolls within 90 days of an election. Experts warn that fast-tracking eligibility reviews on the eve of voting creates high risks of mistakenly disenfranchising legitimate voters.