WASHINGTON (AP) — More than 4 in 10 names reported as potential non-citizen voters in California by the Trump administration cannot be found on the state’s voter rolls, according to a legal filing Saturday by an immigrant rights group.
This is the first external analysis of a list that the Ministry of Justice used to threaten to sue election officials. The analysis also found that thousands of U.S. citizens appear to be flagged as ineligible to vote on the government’s list.
The claim was made in a filing by two data analysts from the University of California, Los Angeles. They analyzed the 20,930 names that the department asked California election officials to treat as possible illegal voters by separating their ballots during vote counting on Election Day.
Several judges rejected the request as unconstitutional and a threat to democracyand local and state officials have said the list appears riddled with errors.
Court filing highlights problems with government list
The scale of the problems with the list was highlighted in the document tabled on Saturday. It describes an analysis by two members of UCLA’s Voting Rights Project, who filed a lawsuit against the Los Angeles-based Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights, or CHIRLA.
The study found that 8,880 of the names, representing 42 percent of the entire list, do not match anyone in California’s current voter file. The study also found that at least 22 of them are U.S. citizens, and many more could be confirmed citizens.
“The experts’ analysis further makes clear that mandatory voter rolls endanger a significant number of eligible California voters,” says the filing, co-signed by Xavier BecerraDemocratic candidate for governor of California and advisor to the Voting Rights Project at UCLA.
The Trump administration had opposed sharing the list, calling it a “fishing expedition” and stressing that it contained sensitive information.
President Donald Trump on Saturday lamented court rulings against his efforts to force California to separate votes from individuals his administration characterizes as suspected non-citizens, even though one of them came from a judge he himself appointed.
In a social media post, Trump claimed that his Justice Department had discovered “20,000, but potentially hundreds of thousands, if not millions,” of fraudulent votes, “and the Court just ruled against it. Why would they refuse to fix voter fraud?”
The Trump administration also urged Washington State to remove what it says is that 400 possible noncitizens are on its lists, although state election officials say that list is also unreliable and includes one voter who voted in the 1990s.
The Justice Department also warned California election officials that they could be held criminally liable if they let noncitizens vote and issued subpoenas election offices there.
Election officials say they don’t have time to investigate
Election officials complained that the Trump administration confronted them at the last minute before Election Day with lists of potential illegal voters, without having time to conduct the careful investigation required by law before removing someone from the rolls.
Numerous lawsuits have been filed to prevent the administration from continuing to threaten local election officials.
On Friday, a California federal judge ordered the Ministry of Justice to stop sending requests to state officials, a decision the Trump administration appealed Saturday. Several counties across the state did quick checks of the Trump list and found numerous errors.
Saturday’s broader analysis was possible because a federal judge on Friday ordered the Trump administration to share the list with plaintiffs in the case.
CHIRLA and the UCLA Project sued the Department of Homeland Security in early October to stop it from using federal immigration data to challenge state voter rolls. The trial examples cited in other states where federal government data has been proven include by mistake thousands of citizens.
Case says government methods pose risk to voting
The case argued that data comparison methods risked disenfranchising or deterring citizens from voting. Additionally, the plaintiffs say, the lists could disproportionately target naturalized citizens who are legally eligible to vote.
Applying the government’s methodology, UCLA researchers found that nearly 7,500 of the state’s naturalized citizens were “highly likely” to be falsely flagged as ineligible.
Researchers noted that the administration apparently removed the voter identification number from names, making it harder for election officials to determine whether the people reported were already on their lists or if they were duplicates in the Justice Department’s list. They described the voter ID number as the most crucial data point.
The Justice Department says there is just as much to lose if ballots are not separated.
“Each ballot cast by an ineligible voter voids the vote of a U.S. citizen,” Kiersten V. Pels, a department spokesperson, wrote in an email. “The department makes no apologies for protecting these votes.”
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