Federal government asks California counties to set aside ‘probable’ non-citizen ballots

The U.S. Department of Justice stepped up its efforts to intervene in California’s ongoing election Friday, sending letters to county election offices across the state asking them to separate ballots from voters the Trump administration considers noncitizens.

The letters — which give officials 48 hours to act and threaten them with criminal penalties if they refuse — follow similar correspondence the Justice Department sent last week to California Secretary of State Shirley Weber and Dean Logan, head of the Los Angeles County Registrar’s Office, calling for some 20,000 ballots statewide to be set aside and not counted until officials state and local authorities can prove that voters are citizens.

When Weber and Logan hesitated, the Justice Department immediately sued them and the state in a case now pending in federal court. California officials argued that the Justice Department’s efforts were illegal.

The new letters, first reported by the San Francisco Chronicle, follow earlier threats from Justice Department officials and President Trump, warning that local election officials in California could face criminal prosecution for being “complicit and complicit in a federal crime” if they tabulated the votes of “likely non-citizens” that the administration has flagged.

A spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Los Angeles said 57 of California’s 58 counties had received the letters, except for Los Angeles, which had already received notification.

“The letters speak for themselves. Any election official who knowingly tampers with a non-citizen’s ballot puts themselves at legal risk,” said First Assistant U.S. Attorney. Bill Essayli, Los Angeles’ top federal prosecutor, said in a statement.

Essayli wrote Friday night on

Essayli wrote that “knowingly processing non-citizen ballots is a federal crime” and said authorities “will hold election officials accountable. No one is above the law.”

The Justice Department did not respond to a Times inquiry. California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta’s office declined to comment.

Tricia Webber, Santa Cruz County Clerk, President of the California Assn. clerks and election officials, said: “From what I can gather, most, if not all, counties do what I do: I sat down with our attorney and went over everything,” Webber said.

Webber said two people with Department of Justice qualifications showed up at his office Friday and handed him a manila envelope containing the letter requiring him to comply within 48 hours to determine the citizenship of 81 people in his county.

“I can’t tell you anything other than I’m looking into it and doing my due diligence,” she said. “This is not normal protocol for us.”

Kristin Connelly, head of the Contra Costa County Recorder’s Office, said she was also among those who received a letter. She said she had not yet responded as of Friday evening, but was in contact with her county legal counsel and “colleagues across the state who received similar letters today.”

“The nonpartisan Contra Costa County Elections Division administers elections in accordance with all state and federal election laws, as well as the United States Constitution and the California State Constitution. Our work is observable,” Connelly said. “This threat is of no use and is intended to intimidate.”

The letter she received, from US Atty. Craig Missakian was threatened with criminal sanctions for tabulating the votes of individuals the county is “on notice of” and who may not be U.S. citizens.

Missakian, the top federal prosecutor for the Northern District of California, wrote that he was providing Connelly with a “subset” of “407 probable aliens” from the state’s broader list of 20,000 voters, and demanded that Connelly commit within 48 hours to working with Department of Justice and Department of Homeland Security officials to identify who among those 407 “is a citizen and who is not.”

“This means sending us the nonpublic information associated with the registration of each suspected alien, which includes anything in your possession from the following: a Social Security number, a copy of a state ID or driver’s license or the information contained therein, a copy of the voter registration application supporting the registration, and a copy or list of documents that were submitted by the registrant at the time the person registered to vote or obtained their driver’s license if she is registered as an automobile voter,” Missakian wrote.

He also wrote that he was reaching out by letter “to unequivocally clarify the legal implications of continuing to mail absentee ballots to individuals on the list or tabulating ballots cast by them until their citizenship can be verified.”

The Justice Department previously sued California over its election records. A federal judge dismissed the suit, calling the requests a threat to democracy. The Justice Department has also lost similar cases requiring voter rolls in dozens of other states.

California Sen. Alex Padilla said in a statement Friday that “Donald Trump and Todd Blanche are attempting to interfere in California’s elections.”

Padilla, the highest-ranking Democrat on the U.S. Senate Rules and Administration Committee, which oversees federal elections, added: “No matter how many lawsuits they file or how many election officials they threaten, they don’t have the authority to intervene. »

Padilla told local election officials, “We support you.”

“The Trump administration is scared and desperate,” he said. “Their attempts to take control of our elections will fail. »

The Justice Department received some records by subpoenaing state and county officials to obtain records of specific voters.

The letters were the subject of discussion among members of the California Assn. clerks and election officials Friday, with officials working out how to respond.

Logan, Los Angeles County’s top elections official, sent an email to other association members saying he had seen a copy of the letter addressed to some counties — which he condemned as misrepresenting the facts and threatening election officials “twelve days before the election” with “intimidation posturing.”

Logan called the 48-hour response time “unenforceable” and noted that the Justice Department was “requiring individual-level data from named counties similar to what it previously obtained only through subpoenas.”

Logan’s office also said that an initial review of a subset of the 20,000 voters initially reported by the Justice Department found that many of them were born in the United States, many were not actually registered and many had never voted.