The Trump administration sent letters to county leaders in California Friday, demanding a voter roll review within 48 hours — despite local officials’ insistence that the timeline is too tight to complete the demands with less than two weeks remaining before Election Day.
The Justice Department’s letters warned election employees in all 58 California counties that they could be subject to “significant federal scrutiny and legal exposure” if they don’t comply with a request to manually segregate the ballots of individuals the department claims may be ineligible to vote.
The letters, signed by Bilal Essayli, first assistant U.S. attorney for the Central District of California, warned that employees who knowingly count the ballots of individuals that the DOJ claims may be ineligible to vote could be considered “aiders and abettors of a federal crime,” Reuters reported.
The DOJ also filed an emergency motion in the U.S. District Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit on Friday, asking the court to require state officials to segregate the ballots of “ineligible noncitizen voters,” which the DOJ alleges are currently being counted by election officials.
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The new letters, combined with a previous attempt to give county officials an ultimatum via thumb drive, represent the government’s latest efforts to intervene in California’s election process and crack down on what it claims is widespread voter fraud, despite noncitizen voting being an extremely rare occurrence. California is the country’s biggest blue state and relies heavily on mail-in voting, and the DOJ’s attempt to intervene in the state’s election proceedings is one part of the administration’s feud with local leaders like Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom.
Earlier this month, the DOJ sued California officials, challenging the state’s refusal to set aside ballots from people President Donald Trump’s administration had flagged as potential noncitizens until the state can confirm their eligibility.
“We are asking each county election official to commit to working with us by providing the necessary information for DHS to quickly verify citizenship status,” DOJ spokesperson Kiersten Pels said in an email. “With their help, we can ensure the most secure election in California history”
The state has asserted the request is logistically impossible in court filings — and that the executive branch lacks the authority to interfere in state-administered elections.
On Oct. 13, a DOJ representative hand-delivered a thumb drive to Los Angeles County that it said included the names of 20,000 people the federal government believes are noncitizens who were sent a mail-in ballot.
On Friday, the DOJ requested that election employees segregate the ballots of individuals whose citizenship status cannot be confirmed.
A Mendocino County registrar said the list included names of voters from another county. A representative for Contra Costa County said officials there received the letter, but there are no plans to alter the county’s ballot counting, The New York Times reported.
The county said it has attempted to analyze the data and compared around 200 records with voter records. County officials found only 42.4% are active voters, less than half had mailed ballots, and most had never voted.
The county argued that further attempts to cross-reference the name on the list with a registration record would need to be performed manually and redirect critical administrative employees.
The DOJ sued the state on Oct. 15, requesting an injunction barring California from counting ballots received from the identified individuals on the thumb drive. The government has since argued that local officials are refusing to act on their request, potentially leading to the inclusion of invalid ballots in final tabulations.
In a response to the DOJ’s Friday filing, state officials said they couldn’t set aside the ballot of a registered voter under state or federal law based on a third party’s dispute of that voter’s citizenship, adding that doing so would violate state and federal law.
“Any such segregation would create a serious risk of irreparably denying registered voters who are U.S. citizens (and otherwise eligible to vote) their fundamental constitutional right to vote in the 2026 elections,” the county wrote.
The appeals court will hold a remote hearing on Sunday.
Earlier this week, the federal government announced it had charged 28 people with illegally voting in a federal election.
This story has been updated with a comment from DOJ.
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