By Staff Reporter
WASHINGTON — The Justice Department has told California election officials they could face federal prosecution if they count mail ballots from about 20,000 voters the Trump administration calls “likely” noncitizens. New York, which beat the same department in court this summer over its voter rolls, opens early voting Saturday with that appeal still pending.
The warning came in an Oct. 16 letter from Trent McCotter, the acting deputy attorney general, to the Los Angeles County Counsel’s office, with copies to California Secretary of State Shirley Weber and Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder Dean Logan, The Associated Press reported.
“Noncitizen voting in a federal election is a federal crime — and knowingly facilitating such conduct is equally unlawful,” Mr. McCotter wrote. “If persons knowingly tabulate ballots cast by individuals identified by federal agencies as noncitizens, they risk becoming aiders and abettors to a federal crime.”
President Donald Trump shared the letter on Truth Social with a one-line comment: “They will all go to jail for a long period of time!!!” according to Reuters.
A thumb drive, a 48-hour deadline and a lawsuit
The letter followed a lawsuit the department filed Oct. 15 asking a court to stop California from counting those ballots until the voters’ citizenship is confirmed. Officials had been given a password-protected thumb drive with roughly 20,000 names and 48 hours to review it, the AP reported. California mails a ballot to every registered voter, more than 23 million people.
Los Angeles County Counsel Dawyn R. Harrison said the county could not comply because the administration had not explained how the list was built, Reuters reported. Mr. McCotter’s letter said the department used “internal immigration records” and data matching.
Ms. Weber’s office pointed Reuters to an earlier statement saying the department’s attempts to “unlawfully gain access to states’ protected voter data and purge voter rolls serve only to cause chaos and fuel public distrust in our elections.”
Rick Hasen, an election law professor at UCLA, told the AP that the letter “ups the ante by threatening election officials with potential criminal prosecution.”
“It is deplorable that rather than work cooperatively and assist states in their election administration responsibilities, the federal government is making escalating threats and unreasonable demands beyond its power in the middle of an ongoing election,” he said.
What the record shows on noncitizen voting
The department has charged about 90 people with election misconduct so far this year, including 50 accused of voting as noncitizens, the AP reported. More than 227 million Americans were registered to vote in 2024.
Earlier federal claims have shrunk under scrutiny. In July, the administration said Nevada had 1,500 noncitizens on its rolls. After the names were turned over to the state, the number of registered noncitizens turned out to be zero, according to the AP. Reuters noted that citizenship-check systems have sometimes wrongly flagged naturalized citizens.
New York already fought this battle, and won the first round
The Justice Department sued New York’s State Board of Elections in September 2025 to force it to hand over its complete, unredacted voter registration list, the database known as NYSVoter. The department’s own enforcement page also lists a June 2026 demand for a unique identifier for every registered New York voter and a July 7, 2026, letter warning state officials of their “criminal liability regarding illegal voting.”
On July 10, U.S. District Judge Mae A. D’Agostino in Albany dismissed the case with prejudice. She ruled that none of the three federal laws the department cited, the Civil Rights Act of 1960, the National Voter Registration Act and the Help America Vote Act, required New York to turn over the full list.
On the Help America Vote Act claim, she noted the government did not allege that New York had actually violated the law. It wanted the data to find out whether it had. Judge D’Agostino wrote that “the Government cannot use discovery in hopes of finding an unpled HAVA violation.”
The ruling did not split cleanly along party lines inside the state board. The motion to dismiss came from New York State and the board’s three Democratic appointees, joined by the NAACP and the League of Women Voters, who intervened. The three Republican-appointed defendants, Commissioner Anthony Casale and co-executive directors Peter Kosinski and Raymond Riley III, answered the complaint and did not move to dismiss, the decision notes.
The Justice Department appealed. The case is pending before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit as No. 26-2060, docketed July 28, according to federal court records.
What it means for voters here
Early voting in New York runs Saturday, Oct. 24, through Sunday, Nov. 1, with Election Day on Nov. 3. Nothing in the California fight changes how ballots are counted in Erie or Niagara counties. But it shows how the administration may treat a state that refuses its demands in the days before an election.
The question is already live in Western New York. Niagara County lawmakers are weighing a lawsuit against Albany over a state immigration law they say could shield noncitizen voting, though the law exempts election work, as The Buffalo Chronicle reported last week.
Questions that remain unanswered: how the federal list of “likely” noncitizens was compiled, how many of the names are citizens, and whether the department would try the same approach in New York if the Second Circuit sides with it after Election Day. California’s case is also likely to test how far “aiding and abetting” liability can reach election workers who are following state law.
Featured image: The Robert F. Kennedy Department of Justice Building in Washington. Photo by APK via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0.
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