The Justice Department is threatening California with possible legal action after it says the state mailed ballots to noncitizens ahead of the midterm elections.
The DOJ sent a letter on Tuesday to California Secretary of State Shirley Weber informing her that federal officials provided Los Angeles County election officials with a list of names of individuals who authorities believe to be noncitizens.
Acting Deputy U.S. Attorney Trent McCotter warned that the state has 48 hours to confirm whether any of the individuals on the list were mailed ballots for the November 3 election. That deadline will expire later on Thursday.
“If you cannot implement this process by then, given the ongoing federal election, the United States will have no choice but to seek emergency relief,” the letter states.
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Weber released a statement protesting the federal demands on Wednesday, connecting it to earlier efforts by the DOJ to expunge noncitizens from California’s voter rolls.
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“In July of this year, President Trump and DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin made (still) unsubstantiated claims that California had 190,000 noncitizens on its voter rolls. Given the many high-profile examples of states purging U.S. citizens from their voter rolls based on DHS/SAVE data, SOS immediately requested written information about their methodology and data sources to back up their claims. They refused and provided California with nothing,” Weber said in a statement.
“Now the USDOJ, under threat of ’emergency’ litigation, demands that California blindly trust this administration without any evidence or legal authority to justify its request,” she continued.
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“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,” Weber added. “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.”
President Donald Trump’s administration has heightened scrutiny on state voter rolls since gaining office, as part of the president’s wider interest in election integrity.
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The administration received approval by the Supreme Court in late September to move forward with its massive voter verification system.
The September 25 emergency order allowed states, for now, to use a Department of Homeland Security program called Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) in their efforts to verify the eligibility of voters on their rolls, as the DOJ has done in the California case.
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The court’s order put on hold a federal judge’s June ruling that had deemed the Republican administration’s recently revamped version of SAVE illegal. U.S. District Court Judge Sparkle L. Sooknanan had blocked the use of the tool, saying it violated Americans’ privacy rights and could result in voters being wrongly removed from the rolls.
The Trump administration moved to expand SAVE after the president signed an executive order directing the creation of a federal voter registration list and imposed new restrictions on eligibility for voting by mail as part of a broader effort to combat voter fraud.
Fox News’ Greg Norman and the Associated Press contributed to this report.