State Blacklists 20,930 Names; 42% Aren't Even Voters

More than 4 in 10 names the Trump administration flagged as possible noncitizen voters in California can't be found on the state's voter rolls. That's what two data analysts at UCLA's Voting Rights Project told a court Saturday, in a filing backed by the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights, or CHIRLA. It's the first outside look at a list the Department of Justice has used to threaten election officials with prosecution. The analysts examined all 20,930 names the department demanded California treat as possible illegal voters by separating their ballots during the Election Day count. They found 8,880 of them, 42% of the list, don't correspond to anyone in California's current voter file.

Who Gets Crushed

The people at the bottom of this list are the ones the apparatus says it's protecting. The researchers found at least 22 of the flagged names are U.S. citizens, and many more may correspond to confirmed citizens. Applying the government's own methodology, they found nearly 7,500 naturalized citizens in the state were "highly likely" to be incorrectly flagged as ineligible.

There's a detail that makes the mess worse. The researchers noted the administration apparently stripped the voter identification number from the names, which made it harder for election officials to tell whether flagged people were already on their rolls or were duplicates in the Justice Department's list. They described that number as the most crucial data point. Without it, a county clerk is left guessing.

"The expert analysis further makes clear that the mandated voter list endangers a significant number of eligible California voter," the filing said. It was cosigned by Xavier Becerra, the Democratic candidate for California governor and an adviser to the UCLA Voting Rights Project. The filing added that the demands, backed by criminal and civil threats, endanger the voting rights of CHIRLA's members and clients. The group argues the lists could disproportionately target naturalized citizens who are legally entitled to vote.

Who Has the Power

The Justice Department fought to keep the list secret. It called the request a "fishing expedition" and noted the list included sensitive information. Saturday's analysis was only possible because a federal judge ordered the administration on Friday to share it with the plaintiffs.

Meanwhile, election officials say they're getting ambushed. They've complained that the administration hands them lists of possible illegal voters at the last minute before Election Day, with no time for the painstaking investigation the law requires before anyone comes off the rolls. The Justice Department has warned California election officials they could face criminal liability if they let noncitizens vote, and it issued subpoenas to election offices there. Several California counties ran quick checks of the list and found numerous errors.

It isn't just California. The administration has urged Washington state to remove what it says were 400 possible noncitizens, though state election officials say that list is also unreliable and includes one voter who cast ballots in the 1990s. Nevada checked its list and found that none of the names were non-citizen voters. All 50 states already prohibit non-citizen voting in federal elections, and voter fraud is considered exceedingly rare.

What They're Calling "Order"

On Friday, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco rejected the administration's complaint a second time, determining it unconstitutional. "We decline the United States's invitation to contravene the Elections Clause by undermining the Constitution's plain text," the court majority wrote. A federal judge in California also ordered the Justice Department to stop sending demands to state officials. The administration appealed that decision Saturday.

The courts are doing the refereeing here, one branch of the machine slapping down another, and it's worth noticing how thin that protection is. It rests on judges, not on the people being flagged. And the fight is over a list nobody outside the government could examine until a judge forced it open.

Trump, for his part, bemoaned the rulings in a social media post Saturday, even though one came from a judge he nominated. He claimed his Justice Department found "20,000, but potentially Hundreds of Thousands, and maybe even Millions," of fraudulent votes, "and the Court has just ruled against it. Why would they reject fixing Election Fraud?" Al Jazeera reported that Trump has expressed fear he could be impeached if his Republican Party loses its majorities in both chambers of Congress, and that he has a track record of spreading false information about elections, including that his 2020 defeat was the result of a "rigged" vote. He has also accused California of "cheating" in its June 2 primary after several Republican candidates underperformed.

The Justice Department's spokesperson, Kiersten V. Pels, wrote in an email: "Every ballot cast by an ineligible voter cancels out the vote of an American citizen. The Department makes no apology for protecting those votes."

Tuesday's midterm elections will decide which party controls Congress. California will elect 52 of the 435 House seats. CHIRLA and the UCLA project had already sued the Homeland Security Department in early October to stop it from using federal immigration data to challenge state voter rolls, citing other states where that data mistakenly included thousands of citizens.