Top image: Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) in his official Senate portrait. Photo: United States Senate Photographic Studio (public domain) via Wikimedia Commons
Ten days before Election Day, the Trump administration’s effort to keep suspected noncitizens from voting in California has reached Bay Area election offices, and the region’s senior senator has become one of its leading critics in Congress.
On Friday, the Justice Department sent letters to 57 of California’s 58 counties asking registrars to help determine whether people on a federal list are citizens, and to set aside, but not cancel, mail ballots from those whose citizenship cannot be confirmed, NBC News reported. Los Angeles County received a similar letter last week. The letter NBC News obtained, sent to San Bernardino County, listed 1,133 names. NBC did not report how many names were sent to each Bay Area county.
The administration’s case
The Justice Department says California is letting noncitizens vote. In an Oct. 15 announcement, it said it had sued the state, working with the Department of Homeland Security, over “more than 20,000 people who are likely aliens” on the voter rolls.
“State-facilitated voter fraud is unacceptable,” Attorney General Todd Blanche said. Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin and Acting Deputy Attorney General Trent McCotter said in the announcement, “California is facilitating unlawful voting by knowingly allowing noncitizens to vote. This needs to stop.”
First Assistant U.S. Attorney Bilal Essayli, whose Los Angeles office is handling the matter, says the request is modest. “We’re not asking California to take any drastic steps other than to sequester the ballots,” he told Fox News, adding that the 20,000 figure is “the floor.” In the county letters, he wrote, “An alien voting in a federal election is a federal crime — and knowingly facilitating such conduct is equally unlawful,” according to NBC News. “The letters speak for themselves,” he said in a statement. “Any election official who knowingly processes the ballot of a noncitizen is opening themselves to legal jeopardy.”
In court
The department has asked the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to order the ballots set aside before U.S. District Judge David O. Carter rules, treating his delay as a “constructive denial” of its request, NBC News reported. “This is an emergency,” the department told the appeals court, warning of “untraceable disenfranchisement and dilution” of lawful votes, according to Fox News. The 9th Circuit ordered California to respond by noon Saturday. Carter’s hearing remains set for Tuesday.
California’s position is that counties lack the authority and the federal data to verify citizenship, and that ballots already processed cannot be separated out. Los Angeles County alone had processed 331,000 ballots, Fox reported.
Padilla’s demands
Padilla, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Rules and Administration Committee, which oversees federal elections, and Rep. Joe Morelle (D-N.Y.), his counterpart on the House Administration Committee, sent McCotter an Oct. 19 letter questioning the department’s methods. They pointed to an earlier DHS claim of 16,000 noncitizens on Nevada’s rolls, a figure they say Nevada officials found to be wrong.
The letter asks the department to answer by 5 p.m. on Nov. 2, the day before the election. Among the questions: whether the White House was involved, how the list was compiled, and why it was delivered on a thumb drive.
“The Department must serve the interests of Americans, not operate at the personal and political direction of the president,” Padilla and Morelle said in a joint statement. After the county letters went out Friday, Padilla said, “Trump’s DOJ has not provided any evidence for their claims of massive voter fraud. They’ve admitted that the data they point to is inaccurate and unreliable. No matter how many lawsuits they file or how many election officials they threaten, they do not have the authority to interfere.”
Padilla’s office also highlighted his Freedom from Intimidation in Elections Act and a Senate Democratic election observer program that it says has trained more than 100 staff members to monitor voting in nine states.
The state’s view
Secretary of State Shirley Weber said in an Oct. 14 statement that the department gave her office 48 hours to respond, 21 days before the election. She said the list was delivered to Los Angeles County on a thumb drive with the password written on a sticky note, and noted that in July the president and DHS had claimed 190,000 noncitizens were on California’s rolls. “The USDOJ’s relentless efforts … serve only to cause chaos and fuel public distrust,” Weber said.
What it means for Bay Area voters
Nothing in the letters changes the instructions for voters. Ballots mailed to registered voters can still be returned by mail, at drop boxes or in person through Nov. 3. Whether any county sets ballots aside will depend on the courts and on how registrars respond to the department.
Sen. Adam Schiff, California’s other senator, sits on the Senate Judiciary Committee, which oversees the Justice Department.
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