The federal government sued California on Thursday, October 15, asking a court to prevent the state from counting certain mail-in ballots in the November 3 federal election until the voters’ citizenship can be verified. The lawsuit follows a dispute over a federal list of people the Justice Department believes are likely noncitizens who were sent ballots.
Filed in federal court in Los Angeles, the complaint asks California to set aside ballots associated with those names while officials check eligibility. Federal law prohibits noncitizens from voting in federal elections. The Justice Department had warned California Secretary of State Shirley Weber on October 13 that it would seek emergency court intervention unless the state acted within 48 hours. It also asked officials not to send ballots to anyone on the list who had not yet received one.
Weber disputed the request, saying the department had not provided her office with the list or adequate evidence supporting its conclusions. In a letter to the department, she said officials were being asked to assess the citizenship of approximately 20,000 people immediately before an election. Her office also challenged an earlier federal claim that California’s voter rolls included 190,000 noncitizens, saying federal officials had not supplied the requested methodology or data.
California officials say state law permits only U.S. citizens to register and requires ineligible registrants to be removed. Governor Gavin Newsom criticized the administration’s demands, arguing they would conflict with federal law and interfere with the state’s elections. The Justice Department, meanwhile, says separating the questioned ballots would prevent potentially ineligible votes from being counted before citizenship is established. The court has been asked to decide whether to order that process before the election. The dispute centers on how to verify eligibility without delaying the counting of lawful votes in the November general election.