The Trump administration on Thursday sued the state of California and a Los Angeles County official,
seeking to temporarily block the state from counting mail ballots submitted by voters it asserts are noncitizens.
The suit, which would apply to some 20,000 Californians that the administration has cast as “likely noncitizens,” is a long shot.
But it opens a new front in the administration’s legal battles with local election officials weeks before the midterm elections.
Over the past 18 months, the Trump administration has sued California and other states over voter rolls,
and has lost resoundingly in court.
This time, the Justice Department is trying a new strategy,
seeking a court order to prevent the counting of votes from the 20,000 people in the state identified by the Department of Homeland Security “until their citizenship status can be determined.”
Similar past claims of thousands of illegal voters have fallen apart under scrutiny.
Last month, election officials in Nevada said that they had examined a list provided by homeland security officials of 185 names of supposed noncitizens who had been improperly registered to vote,
and found that every person on the list was a lawful citizen.
“I think this lawsuit is going to have some very serious problems,
and raises questions about what the reason is for D.O.J.’s timing,”
said David Becker of the Center for Election Innovation and Research,
a nonpartisan group that advises election officials.
He noted that the administration’s past claims of noncitizen voting in other states had been found to be
“vastly inflated” and “rife with errors.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/10/15/us/politics/trump-administration-california-voter-rolls.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share
