The Department of Justice is threatening legal action against California unless state and local election officials review a federal list of suspected noncitizen voters within 48 hours, as the Trump administration presses states to address voter eligibility ahead of the November midterms.
The deadline is noon Eastern time on Thursday, October 15.
In letters sent Tuesday to California Secretary of State Shirley Weber and Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder Dean Logan, acting Deputy Attorney General R. Trent McCotter demanded that officials review a list of people the federal government believes are likely noncitizens who received mail-in ballots for the November 3 election.
Late Wednesday, Weber’s office issued a statement saying the DOJ “demands that California blindly trust this administration without any evidence or legal authority to justify its request.”
“The Secretary of State’s (SOS) office received a demand to review a list of an unknown number of people the ‘Federal Government believes are likely noncitizens,’ but the United States Department of Justice did not provide the list to our office.”
The statement included a direct quote from Weber that said: “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.”
The Justice Department provided Los Angeles County with a password-protected thumb drive containing the names and asked officials to determine whether any U.S. citizens had been mistakenly included. For individuals whose citizenship could not be independently confirmed, McCotter demanded that officials set aside their ballots until their status was resolved.
The letter also called on officials to stop sending ballots to listed individuals who had not yet received one and to refrain from verifying signatures or tabulating ballots already returned until citizenship could be determined.
“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,” McCotter wrote.
“Allowing noncitizens to vote cancels citizen votes,” he added.
The letters do not disclose how many voters are on the list or explain the methodology the federal government used to identify them. Reuters first reported the letters. California’s election officials had not publicly responded to the latest demands as of Wednesday. The state began mailing ballots to registered voters on October 5, leaving election officials with little time to investigate the list before the federal deadline.
The Justice Department defended its intervention, citing the federal prohibition on noncitizen voting in federal elections. “This should not be controversial, as the criminal statute is clear: only American citizens may vote in federal elections,” DOJ spokeswoman Kiersten Pels said in a statement, according to Politico. “The Department will take all necessary legal action to protect election integrity and ensure compliance with federal law.”
The demands are part of a broader Trump administration campaign to identify and remove noncitizens from voter registration lists.
Federal officials have alleged that hundreds of thousands of noncitizens are registered to vote, but those claims have faced scrutiny over the accuracy of the government’s data and the extent to which flagged individuals have actually cast ballots.
The administration has also sought unredacted voter registration data from states nationwide, filing lawsuits against 30 states and Washington, D.C. over their refusal to provide the requested records. Federal judges have rejected the department’s demands for those records in cases decided so far, including litigation involving California.
The administration has encountered other legal obstacles in its election security efforts. The Supreme Court kept on hold new Postal Service requirements for mail ballots, while courts have also halted parts of Trump’s 2025 executive order imposing new requirements related to proof of citizenship in voter registration.
