WASHINGTON — A thumb drive that the Justice Department says holds the names of noncitizens who were mailed California ballots is sitting unopened in Los Angeles County, and the department wants those ballots set aside by noon Thursday.
Acting Deputy Attorney General R. Trent McCotter sent the letters on Tuesday to California Secretary of State Shirley Weber and to Dean Logan, the Los Angeles County registrar-recorder. They give 48 hours to check the citizenship of each person on the list and, for anyone whose status cannot be confirmed, to “segregate — not cancel” their vote-by-mail ballots. Where no ballot has yet gone out, McCotter wrote, officials should “take all immediate and reasonable steps” not to send one.
The ballots are already out. California began mailing them on October 5 to every registered voter, and Election Day is less than three weeks away. A Justice Department spokesperson said the request is not controversial because “only American citizens may vote in federal elections” and that the department is asking California to sequester ballots, not alter its voter list.
The officials who received the letters describe a different package. Logan said the drive came with a handwritten note giving its password, that his office has not opened it because doing so “would conflict with established data privacy and information security protocols,” and that the letter does not say how many people are involved. Weber said the department never gave her office the list at all and called its effort to get states’ protected voter data “relentless” and unlawful.
The legal footing is disputed. Federal law bars systematic list maintenance within 90 days of a federal election, leaving only individualized changes such as a notice that a voter has died, NBC News reported. Justin Levitt, a former Justice Department official under President Obama who contributes to NBC, said the federal government has no authority behind its demands: “They can send the letter. California doesn’t have to do anything about it.”
The department’s record points the same way. Its Civil Rights Division has filed 31 lawsuits to force states to hand over unredacted voter rolls and has lost 26, without a single win so far, CBS News reported. It has said it intends to share the data with the Department of Homeland Security to screen for noncitizens. This is the department’s latest push against Democratic-run states ahead of what TEH has covered as the ballot seizures that election officials and judges are preparing for, and it follows the Supreme Court’s refusal to enforce the mail ballot rule before the midterms.
Nobody outside the Justice Department has said how many names are on the drive, or how the government decided they were “likely noncitizens” who had been sent ballots. The department says it has the answer. Los Angeles County is waiting for noon Thursday with the drive unopened.
