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Election officials from across California questioned the accuracy of the federal government’s methodology for finding noncitizen voters after the Trump administration threatened them with criminal charges last week.
The counties on Friday were given 48 hours to commit to working with federal authorities and to segregate ballots from a list of people federal authorities claimed were likely noncitizens.
The letters said the list of names were from the same group of 20,000 people that the Trump administration flagged as noncitizens and then sued California over, demanding that state officials not count those ballots until they verify the voters’ citizenship.
State officials have questioned the accuracy of the data and have refused to comply, saying the federal government risks disenfranchising thousands of voters in an attempt to illegally meddle in state elections. On Tuesday, a federal judge appeared skeptical of the Trump administration’s legal arguments.
Meanwhile, the letters counties received last week threatened potential criminal charges for election officials who “knowingly tabulate ballots cast by individuals identified by federal agencies as noncitizens.”
Butte County Clerk-Recorder Keaton Denlay said he received one such letter and a demand to not count ballots from a list of 47 people.
“Upon inspection of the list of names, it appeared to be a print screen of a poorly formatted excel spreadsheet with missing and jumbled information,” he said in a statement.
Denlay said he reviewed the list and found that 32 of the people were not on Butte County’s active voter rolls and were not sent ballots. Seven others “did not have sufficient information … to match to our voter list with confidence” since the list only contained partial names, partial addresses, no dates of birth, no drivers’ license numbers or Social Security numbers.
Six of the names belonged to people who may not be eligible to vote, but Denlay said California law requires those challenging a voter’s eligibility to have extraordinary levels of proof.
“Given the overall inaccuracy of the list provided and its lack of specificity, I believe the Department of Justice has not met that burden,” Denlay said. “There will be no further action taken at this time.”
Fresno County Registrar of Voters James Kus also received a letter, but he said he couldn’t tell how many ballots federal prosecutors wanted him to segregate, since the “not particularly legible” list was a printed sheet, in small font, and “not in a format that facilitates counting or reviewing.” He said the county already follows state and federal voter registration laws.
“We will not be deviating from those legal requirements for this letter,” Kus told CalMatters in an email.
Francisco Diaz, San Benito County registrar of voters, said his office received a demand with 33 names. A preliminary review found that some on the list weren’t registered to vote.
“Hand-delivering a letter via armed federal agents with an arbitrary 48-hour deadline does not circumvent state law,” Diaz said in a statement. “We will not be intimidated by agents with guns for simply doing our jobs, nor will we be rushed into compromising confidential voter data.”
Orange County Registrar of Voters Bob Page said he wasn’t notified of a letter alleging his county had 1,754 “likely aliens” on the voter rolls until after business hours on Friday.
That’s because, he told reporters in an email, federal prosecutors had addressed and hand-delivered the letter not to Page but to Orange County Clerk-Recorder Hugh Nguyen, who handles such documents as marriage licenses and property deeds.
On Monday, Page said federal agents delivered a correctly addressed letter to his office, along with a “data storage drive.”
Page planned to respond by the Wednesday deadline, he said.
The messy voter lists counties described fits a pattern, said David Becker, executive director of the Center for Election Innovation & Research, a nonprofit whose mission is to restore trust in the American election system
He noted that the Department of Homeland Security recently claimed that Nevada had nearly 16,000 noncitizens on its voter rolls. DHS sent the state the names of only 185 voters. Nevada officials confirmed the voters had attested they were all U.S. citizens.
Becker said the Trump administration has been making “broad political claims made with great fanfare” only to have them “fall apart as they’re subjected to scrutiny.”
“I’m not entirely sure the DOJ wants to get into court and defend its evidentiary claims because I think they would fall apart, just as we’ve seen in other states,” said Becker, a former U.S. Justice Department attorney.
In federal court on Tuesday, Bill Essayli, the first assistant U.S. attorney in Los Angeles, insisted the federal list of 20,000 people was accurate.
“We stand by the reliability of the information,” he said. “We take our obligations and ethics very seriously.”
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