The Justice Department has given California 48 hours to review a federal list of people it believes are noncitizens who were mailed ballots for the November 3 midterms, or face emergency legal action.
Acting Deputy Attorney General R. Trent McCotter sent letters Tuesday to Secretary of State Shirley Weber and Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder Dean Logan.
The department handed over a password-protected thumb drive listing individuals federal officials “believe are likely noncitizens” who received vote-by-mail ballots.
California began mailing ballots to more than 20 million registered voters on October 5.
The letters demand that officials review the list within 48 hours.
For anyone whose citizenship cannot be independently confirmed, the DOJ wants the state and county to segregate returned ballots, not cancel them, and refrain from verifying signatures or tabulating them until citizenship is determined.
Officials are told to withhold ballots for anyone on the list who has not yet been sent one.
“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.
McCotter wrote that “Allowing noncitizens to vote cancels citizen votes.”
Weber pushed back in her response.
“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, according to a report from Fox News.
“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 said.
Weber continued, “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. 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.”
Logan’s office has not opened the drive, citing security concerns.
“The letter included a USB drive purportedly containing the referenced records, along with a handwritten note providing a password. We have not accessed the drive because doing so would conflict with established data privacy and information security protocols. We do not consider the device a secure medium. Additionally, the letter does not specify the number of individuals involved or describe the information contained in the records,” Logan said in a statement.
Late last month, the Supreme Court allowed states to use the Department of Homeland Security’s Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) system to check voter eligibility for now, after a lower court blocked the expanded version.
Trump signed an executive order directing the creation of a federal voter-registration list and new restrictions on mail voting.
A DOJ spokesperson said the request “should not be controversial” because “only American citizens may vote in federal elections” and “it is a federal crime for noncitizens to vote.”
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