Justice Department gives California counties 48 hours to help check the citizenship of roughly 20,000 listed voters and asks them to set aside those mail ballots
The letters ask for Social Security numbers and warn officials of legal action for knowingly counting a noncitizen's vote; California has 23 million registered voters.
- Sept. 21 — L.A. County said a federal grand jury had subpoenaed its records on dozens of suspected noncitizen voters, the Los Angeles Times reported. - Sept. 29 — The Times reported at least five grand jury subpoenas to L.A. County election officials. That week, a Homeland Security Investigations official put the national hunt at about 1,600 voter-fraud cases and 160 arrests, per inewsource; the U.S. has 211 million active registered voters. - Oct. 15 — DOJ sued California over these ballots. - Oct. 22 — After Judge Carter did not rule by DOJ's noon deadline, DOJ asked the Ninth Circuit to stop California counting mail ballots from 20,930 "likely noncitizen" names.
ContextCalifornia checks citizenship by sworn statement, not by documents. New registrants check a box, under penalty of perjury, saying they are U.S. citizens, the Sacramento Bee reports. The state then matches a driver's license number or the last four digits of a Social Security number against DMV or Social Security records. The Bee says that match verifies a voter's identity. Lying about eligibility on the form is a felony, with up to three years in county jail, per the Orange County registrar. DOJ's list of about 20,000 names is under 0.1% of California's 23 million registered voters, roughly one in 1,150.
ABC NEWS11 sources
