LOS ANGELES — The Justice Department announced criminal charges on Monday against 28 people in California it says are noncitizens who registered or voted illegally, while Los Angeles County election officials said their preliminary analysis of a federal list of about 20,000 “likely” noncitizen registrants shows the list is unreliable, according to reporting by KVCR and NPR.
Federal agents arrested 11 of the 28 people charged, the Justice Department said. All 28 are lawful permanent residents — green-card holders — who may live and work in the United States but may not vote in federal elections, according to the department. The charges are accusations only. “A complaint, indictment, and information merely contain accusations,” the department’s release said. “All defendants are presumed innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law.” Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin called the investigation “Operation Protect the Vote,” and FBI Director Kash Patel said protecting American elections from criminal interference remains a top FBI priority, according to posts by both officials cited in reporting.
The wider dispute concerns a list of about 20,000 registered California voters the department gave the state, asking officials to verify citizenship and, in emergency court papers this week, asking a federal judge to set aside ballots from those voters until their citizenship can be verified, according to reporting on the filings. DOJ deputy press secretary Kiersten Pels said in a statement: “We notified California that noncitizens are likely registered to vote, and we asked the state to independently verify the citizenship of any ballots cast by people on a list that we provided. It refused to do so. Federal law doesn’t permit this willful blindness.”
County officials reached a different conclusion from their first look at the data. Los Angeles County’s preliminary review of 200 sampled names from the list found that more than half of the records were canceled or inactive, about 39 percent of meaningful birthplace entries showed U.S. birth, and 71 percent had no voting history, according to the reporting. Federal filings show agents matched purchased state voter records to commercial and law-enforcement data rather than using the federal SAVE system that verifies immigration status, the reporting said. At least one person charged, Kamlesh Shah, 68, told Sacramento television station KCRA 3 he thought he was able to vote because he had a Real ID, and said he hoped to have the charges dismissed — an account consistent with research cited in the reporting that, in the rare cases when noncitizens vote, it is often green-card holders who misunderstand the rules rather than intentional fraud.
State and county officials argue the federal demand exceeds the government’s authority and would risk disenfranchising lawful voters, disrupt ballot processing, and violate protections against mass roll changes close to an election, according to the reporting. The dispute is moving on an expedited court schedule ahead of the November 3 election.
Why it matters: with early voting under way, a court fight over roughly 20,000 ballots in the nation’s most populous state tests how far the federal government can go in pressing states to verify voter citizenship in the final days before an election — and how accurate the underlying lists must be before ballots are set aside.
What happens next: a federal judge will consider the department’s emergency request, the 28 criminal cases will proceed with each defendant presumed innocent, and California officials say reliable citizenship checks cannot be completed from the list provided before Election Day. Read the original KVCR/NPR report here.
