The plan appears to be: Disqualify first. Ask questions later.
The Trump Justice Department is trying to stop California from counting the ballots of more than 20,000 registered voters.
On Monday (10/12/26), federal officials gave California 48 hours to verify the citizenship of voters they identified as likely noncitizens. If the state could not, Justice demanded that their mail ballots be set aside and not counted.
The names were delivered to Los Angeles County on an encrypted thumb drive with a handwritten password. The county registrar refused to open it, citing privacy and data-security protocols, and refused to separate the ballots.
Voting is already underway. On Thursday, Justice sued.
The government says it matched voter records against immigration databases to identify the voters, but it has not publicly provided evidence establishing that they are noncitizens.
The Trump administration recently made a similar claim in Nevada. Homeland Security initially flagged nearly 16,000 registered voters as possible noncitizens. Further federal review produced 185 names. Nevada officials investigated and reported that their records showed all 185 were citizens.
Now, less than three weeks before the midterm election, the Justice Department is asking a federal judge to stop California from counting thousands of ballots unless the state can verify the citizenship of the voters who cast them.
The plan appears to be: Disqualify first. Ask questions later.
