DOJ Catches California Red-Handed With Noncitizens on Ballot Lists

The Justice Department just handed California a homework assignment with a very short deadline, and honestly, it’s about time someone asked the hard questions. Acting Deputy Attorney General Trent McCotter sent a letter that amounts to one simple demand: figure out why people who aren’t U.S. citizens appear to have received mail-in ballots for November’s election. You’ve got 48 hours. Go.

The letter, delivered on October 13th to Los Angeles County and several other California counties, came with a password-protected thumb drive containing names of individuals the federal government believes aren’t citizens but somehow ended up on voter rolls anyway. McCotter wasn’t playing around with the instructions either. For anyone whose citizenship status can’t be independently confirmed, segregate those ballots immediately. Don’t cancel them, just set them aside until someone can verify whether these folks are actually allowed to vote in American elections. Seems reasonable, right?

If the ballots haven’t been mailed yet, stop the presses. Don’t send them until citizenship gets confirmed. This shouldn’t be controversial, but here we are in 2025 treating basic election integrity like it’s some kind of partisan witch hunt.

California’s secretary of state hasn’t commented yet, which tells you something. The Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder confirmed they got the letter, probably with the same enthusiasm you’d have opening an audit notice from the IRS. This whole situation traces back to July when Department of Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin first told California officials they had noncitizens sitting pretty on their voter rolls. That was months ago. What’s been done since then?

The Trump administration has made cleaning up voter rolls a priority, filing 31 lawsuits demanding unredacted copies from states across the country. The Civil Rights Division says they’re just ensuring states maintain accurate lists, which sounds entirely sensible until you remember that common sense died somewhere around 2016. They’ve admitted they want to share this data with DHS to screen for noncitizens, because apparently that’s necessary now.

Harmeet Dhillon, assistant attorney general for the Civil Rights Division, sent letters to all 50 states in July with a blunt warning: if you knowingly let noncitizens stay on your voter rolls, criminal charges could follow. The response from blue states has been predictable resistance dressed up as righteous indignation.

Here’s where it gets interesting. The Justice Department has lost 26 of these cases so far. Not a single legal victory yet. That’s either a sign that the entire judicial system has gone sideways or that the cases themselves have technical problems. Either way, DOJ has pivoted to using publicly available voter lists and other investigative tools to identify noncitizens who might be registered. Since Trump took office, more than 100 people have faced criminal charges related to voter fraud. That’s not zero.

The president continues asserting that the 2020 election was stolen through fraud, a claim that drives the legacy media absolutely crazy. Experts love trotting out studies showing voter fraud is minimal and doesn’t impact election outcomes. But minimal isn’t zero, and when you’re talking about the integrity of American democracy, shouldn’t the standard be higher than “it probably doesn’t matter much”?

A data analysis published last month found something revealing: states may have added more than 30,000 self-declared noncitizens to voter rolls since 2000 because of software glitches and clerical errors during driver’s license and state ID processing. Defenders immediately point out that’s small compared to the 174 million registered voters in 2024. Sure, it’s a small percentage. But these are people who literally declared themselves as noncitizens and still got registered to vote. How does that happen by accident?

The real question isn’t whether massive fraud swung elections. The question is why anyone would oppose making absolutely certain that only citizens vote in American elections. When California drags its feet on responding to federal concerns about noncitizens receiving ballots, what message does that send? When blue states fight tooth and nail against auditing their voter rolls, what are they protecting?

Election integrity shouldn’t be a partisan issue. Every fraudulent vote dilutes a legitimate one. Every noncitizen who casts a ballot steals the voice of an actual American citizen. These aren’t abstract principles. They’re the foundation of representative government.

California has 48 hours to review the names on that thumb drive. Place your bets on whether they’ll find problems or claim everything’s perfectly fine. Meanwhile, the rest of us get to watch another round of the same tired dance where asking basic questions about election security gets painted as voter suppression. The gaslighting would be impressive if it weren’t so predictable.