Geoff Bennett:
With a good reception to the “News Hour” now, we should say that we had a technical problem at the start of tonight’s show. So thank you for your support.
Now, with the midterm elections less than two weeks away, a new legal battle is raising questions about the federal government’s role in controlling voting rights. A federal judge in California blocked a Department of Homeland Security effort to identify noncitizens on voter rolls.
I spoke about this earlier with our White House correspondent, Liz Landers.
So, Liz, this federal judge made this decision less than two weeks before Election Day. So there is a clear urgency here.
Liz Landers:
Yes, the Department of Homeland Security has been engaged in this operation since August, according to this lawsuit. And this federal judge in California ruled yesterday that they have to restrict their field operations looking for voter fraud and non-citizens on the voter rolls.
DHS cannot conduct checks during field interviews unless it believes someone is a non-citizen. This applies to nine different states: California, Connecticut, Georgia, Missouri, Nevada, New York, Pennsylvania, Washington and Wisconsin. Hundreds of DHS agents are stationed in every state to search for voter fraud.
This was dubbed the Illegal Voter Initiative. And the judge here is concerned that the lists created by DHS had errors and contained citizens’ names. It is already illegal to vote if you are a non-citizen participating in a federal election here.
It is also extremely rare for this to happen. The judge allows this to take effect tomorrow, so the government has time to appeal.
Geoff Bennett:
And there’s another lawsuit the DOJ filed in California regarding mail-in ballots? Let us know.
Liz Landers:
Yes, the Department of Justice is suing California’s Secretary of State as well as Los Angeles County’s top election official to arrest and stop them from counting 20,000 mail-in ballots.
The DOJ claimed there were 20,000 non-citizens on the voter rolls. The Los Angeles County Registrar’s Office told me today that they have not stopped processing ballots there. This always plays out in court. This is a hearing. The next hearing on this subject will take place next Tuesday.
And Attorney General Todd Blanche was asked earlier in the day about the department’s intentions behind the lawsuit.
Todd Blanche, Attorney General of the United States:
We are not trying to create chaos. I still don’t understand why anyone, if confronted with evidence that there are tens of thousands, or even 20,000 ineligible voters receiving ballots, has no motivation whatsoever to do something about it.
Liz Landers:
In response to these actions by the Trump administration and others, a group of Democratic organizations have now sued the Trump administration, alleging voter intimidation.
And this lawsuit says that there is – that the Trump administration is using unfounded claims of voter fraud to influence how the election is conducted.
Geoff, I want to be clear here: there are very few, but there are examples of non-citizens voting in elections. New Jersey discovered a software bug a few months ago – this happened years ago – that allowed non-citizens to register and vote in the state. It was a mistake. There were 6,600 people registered to vote; 340 of them actually vote.
Geoff Bennett:
When the DOJ says there are some 20,000 non-citizens on California’s voter rolls, where does that figure come from?
Liz Landers:
So the Department of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security compile lists based on the state data they obtain, but they are not complete data sets.
And that’s why you see states like California, like the Secretary of State and the Los Angeles County Registrar, saying, we don’t know if this list is accurate.
And, in fact, some of these lists they gave back to the states saying, hey, we think all these people are non-citizens, and it turns out that, especially in Nevada — that was a recent example — there were a lot of people on this list, actually, all in Nevada, who were U.S. citizens.
Geoff Bennett:
Now, beyond all that, you also reported today that the Justice Department is preparing a large-scale election monitoring effort? What did they announce?
Liz Landers:
Yes, a senior Justice Department official briefed reporters and said they were going to send more than 1,000 election observers to all 50 states across the country.
The agency regularly monitors elections, but this year that number is seeing a sharp increase. A DHS official – a DOJ official, I should say – told us that the 2022 midterm elections had 388 people serving as monitors. This year, it would therefore be more than double.
These efforts are guided by federal laws like the Voting Rights Act. And the DOJ official was very clear that their observers must follow state and local guidelines. It’s supposed to be a passive act. These election observers are supposed to observe and take notes.
And monitoring these elections is supposed to be a way to ensure that voting rights laws are followed, Geoff.
Geoff Bennett:
And how are state and local officials responding to all this?
Liz Landers:
Secretaries of State began receiving letters from the Department of Justice regarding this election observation program.
Kansas Republican Secretary of State Scott Schwab said he was informed earlier this week by the DOJ. He’s going to allow election observers to come to Kansas. When I asked him about this larger program, he sort of laughed and said that 1,000 observers wasn’t a lot because of the number of electoral districts across the country.
For her part, Colorado’s Democratic Secretary of State, Jena Griswold, says she is concerned about these election observers. She doesn’t see why the Justice Department has to send them. She said the Justice Department is hostile to free and fair elections and highlighted its efforts to obtain state voter rolls as well as the Justice Department’s defense of presidential executive orders on voting.
Geoff Bennett:
Liz Landers, our thanks for all this reporting. We appreciate it.
Liz Landers:
Of course.
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