DOJ Tells California Counties to Flag Noncitizens on Voter Rolls

The Department of Justice sent letters Friday to 57 of California's 58 counties demanding that local election officials help identify noncitizen voters or risk legal action, according to a letter obtained by NBC News. Los Angeles County received a similar letter the week before.

What does the DOJ letter to California counties say?

The letter sent to San Bernardino County Registrar of Voters Joani Finwall, obtained by NBC News and signed by First Assistant U.S. Attorney Bilal Essayli of the U.S. attorney's office in Los Angeles, says the department is providing a list of names it describes as "likely aliens." "Within 48 hours, we ask that you commit to working with DOJ and DHS to identify who on the accompanying list is a citizen and who is not," Essayli wrote, according to NBC News.

How many voters are named in the list sent to counties?

The letter to San Bernardino County identifies 1,133 names as "likely aliens," per the document cited by NBC News. The outlet did not report a statewide total across the other counties that received letters, and that figure was not included in the source material reviewed for this report.

What legal consequences does the DOJ cite for noncompliance?

Essayli's letter states he is writing "to make unmistakably clear the legal implications of continuing to send vote-by-mail ballots to those people on the list or tabulating ballots cast by them until citizenship can be verified," according to NBC News. For voters whose citizenship status cannot be confirmed, Essayli asked county officials to "immediately instruct the appropriate elections official to segregate — not cancel — those individuals' vote-by-mail" ballots, the letter states, as quoted by NBC News.

Why is this part of a broader dispute between California and federal officials?

NBC News describes the letters as the latest step in an ongoing legal battle between California and the Trump administration, which has made the pursuit of noncitizen voters a priority ahead of the midterms. The department's letters to county registrars, including the one obtained from San Bernardino County, follow a similar letter sent to Los Angeles County roughly a week earlier, according to the outlet.

What happens next for the flagged ballots?

Based on the letter's language, counties are being asked to hold rather than discard ballots tied to names on the DOJ list while citizenship verification is pending, rather than removing those voters from rolls outright. The source material reviewed does not include a response from California's secretary of state, county election officials, or state attorney general, and no such statements were available in the reporting obtained for this article. Any additional legal filings, compliance deadlines, or responses from the 56 other counties that received letters were not detailed in the material reviewed.

Readers can review the original NBC News report, including further detail on the letters and the broader dispute, here.