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Ongoing1 earlier update

This story has run 2 times, starting Oct 15.

  1. Justice Department orders California to check citizenship of an undisclosed list of mail voters and hold their ballots by noon Thursday, Oct. 15
  2. UpdateJustice Department sues California and Los Angeles County to hold uncounted the mail ballots of about 20,000 people it calls likely noncitizens — this issue
ABC NEWSUpdate

Justice Department sues California and Los Angeles County to hold uncounted the mail ballots of about 20,000 people it calls likely noncitizens

Mail-ballot rules
Political Guyentist · October 16, 20262 min read

ABC NEWS

The suit landed Thursday, Oct. 15, 19 days before the Nov. 3 election, after a 48-hour DOJ deadline to review the list passed at noon.

The ask. The Justice Department sued California and Los Angeles County election officials in U.S. District Court for the Central District of California. It wants a judge to order that mail ballots sent to roughly 20,000 people on its list be set aside, not counted, until their citizenship is verified. “State-facilitated voter fraud is unacceptable in the United States of America,” said Attorney General Todd Blanche. ([TS]the complaint's “high confidence” label describes a name match, not proof that anyone lacks citizenship)

The pushback. California officials call the demand baseless and say DOJ has never explained how it built the list.

Catch upwhat happened before · 1 earlier issue

On Tuesday, Oct. 13, acting Deputy Attorney General Trent McCotter sent California and Los Angeles County letters and a password-protected thumb drive, giving them until noon Thursday, Oct. 15, to check the citizenship of the mail voters on it and hold their ballots. The letters did not say how DOJ built the list, and Los Angeles County did not open the drive, which its registrar called not "a secure medium."

  • This summer, the Department of Homeland Security claimed 190,000 noncitizens were on California's voter rolls, without saying how it counted them.

What we’re less sure of3 of 5 claims

Red take

Once a mail ballot is counted it cannot be pulled back out, so the citizenship check should come first. The suit says federal investigators matched about 20,000 California mail voters to noncitizen records on several identifiers at once; holding those ballots until citizenship is verified still counts every citizen and keeps an error out of the tally.

Blue take

The Justice Department wants 20,000 ballots set aside on a list it calls "not practicable" to investigate before Election Day. Nevada's records showed all 185 voters DHS said it had confirmed as noncitizens were citizens, and the suit quietly drops DHS's unexplained summer claim of 190,000 in California. Proof should come before the hold, not after it.