LOS ANGELES — Local elections officials across California are confused and frustrated after receiving letters from President Donald Trump’s Justice Department demanding that county clerks sequester ballots that the federal government says were sent to non-citizen voters before the midterm elections.
The letters, which were sent on Fridayare requesting sensitive information, including Social Security numbers, on about 20,000 voters. It is illegal for non-citizens to register to vote or vote. The administration has insisted that immigrant voting is a major problem nationwide, when in reality it’s quite rarelike the same his own investigations showed.
“All of this is just intended to raise enormous doubts about the integrity of this election,” said John Tuteur, the registrar of voters in Napa County, California’s wine country.
Tutor and other election officials who spoke to The Associated Press on Saturday said they had already begun counting ballots from the state’s 23 million registered voters.
“We’re not changing anything we’re doing. We’re going ahead with the elections,” he said.
The federal government set a 48-hour deadline to provide information and warned that legal action could be taken against any official who knowingly counts a non-citizen’s vote.
However, the California attorney general’s office said the letters contained errors. For example, Mendocino County officials received a list of people who did not reside there, according to the state court filing.
The letters are the last escalation in a legal battle between Democratic-dominated California and Trump’s Justice Department ahead of the midterm elections. The federal government filed a lawsuit Oct. 15, about three weeks before the election, asking a judge to bar the state from counting mail-in ballots from people the federal government has identified as likely noncitizens. A panel of judges on the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals will hear arguments Sunday on whether California can be forced to comply with the federal government’s requirements.
Some clerks say they will count the ballots
Tuteur said two uniformed Department of Homeland Security agents delivered a letter to his office Friday afternoon. The letter included the names of 42 people the federal government accused of being noncitizens illegally registered to vote. There are about 86,000 people registered to vote countywide, out of more than 130,000 residents, Tuteur said. As of Friday, around 11,000 people had already voted by mail. In large counties like Los Angeles, that number has already reached more than 331,000 absentee ballots.
He said his employees and relatives were worried about what happened next.
“My family is upset, worried about what will happen to me,” he said.
The letter sent to Clerk-Recorder Kim Grady’s office in rural Amador County listed four people who allegedly registered to vote illegally in the county. Grady was waiting for more guidance from the state on what to do, and she wasn’t sure she’d get clarification before the deadline.
DOJ threatens to sue
Justice Department spokeswoman Kiersten Pels emphasized in a statement Saturday that the department is “explicitly not requesting a purge, cancellation of registrations, or any other programmatic action.”
Instead, Pels wrote, federal officials are calling for collaboration to “ensure the most secure elections in California history.”
Friday’s letters follow a statewide sweep by federal authorities Monday, where 28 people on the list of 20,000 were charged with illegally registering to vote. Some were also accused of voting illegally and lying on naturalization documents. These charges could lead to years in prison.
Bill Essayli, Los Angeles’ top federal prosecutor, said employees who fail to comply with government requirements could also face prosecution.
“The letters speak for themselves. Any election official who knowingly processes a non-citizen’s ballot is subject to legal risk,” Essayli said in a statement.
Non-citizen voting is very rare. For example, earlier this month, Attorney General Todd Blanche announced federal charges against 10 people in Minnesota suspected of voting illegally in the last three elections, during which more than 8 million ballots were cast in the state.
But Essayli said Monday that even a small number of illegal voters could “dilute” the vote and undermine confidence in the election.
Concerns about accuracy of federal data
Some election officials who spoke to The Associated Press on Saturday questioned the accuracy of the federal government’s list of 20,000 voters.
“I expect this charge to collapse like we’ve seen recently in Nevada,” said Kristin B. Connelly, Contra Costa County’s clerk-recorder and registrar of voters, referring to remarks Trump made in July: when he said the neighboring state had 1,500 non-citizen voters on its rolls. After asking his administration to identify them, the number of non-citizens actually registered turned out to be zero.
Los Angeles County officials, named as defendants in the federal lawsuit, echoed Connelly’s concerns about the federal government’s data. A preliminary analysis of 200 names on the 20,000 statewide list found that more than 40% had canceled registrations, according to a court filing filed Wednesday by county officials. More than 70% of this sample had no voting history and nearly 4 in 10 were born in the United States.
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