It’s about time! Federal pressure intensifies on California to verify voter citizenship as DOJ sues over alleged Noncitizen voting, but it doesn’t stop there! Keep reading!
The U.S. Department of Justice has escalated demands that states—particularly California—verify the citizenship of registered voters, culminating in a lawsuit filed Thursday seeking to block the counting of certain mail ballots.
Acting Deputy Attorney General Trent McCotter sent letters this week to California Secretary of State Shirley Weber and Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder Dean Logan, providing a password-protected thumb drive with the names of more than 20,000 individuals the federal government believes are likely noncitizens who received or will receive vote-by-mail ballots.
The letters gave officials 48 hours to review the list, independently confirm citizenship where possible, and segregate ballots from those whose status could not be verified.
The Justice Department, citing data from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and Homeland Security Investigations, argues that federal law (18 U.S.C. § 611) prohibits noncitizens from voting in federal elections and that allowing them to cast ballots dilutes citizens' votes.
The subsequent lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California asks a judge to enjoin the state from tabulating those ballots “until the voter’s citizenship status can be determined,” framing it as enforcement of the Supremacy Clause. This follows broader DOJ actions, including lawsuits against multiple states seeking unredacted voter rolls for screening against federal immigration databases, and a March 2026 White House executive order directing DHS, USCIS, and the Social Security Administration to compile and transmit “State Citizenship Lists” derived from federal records.
California officials have turned up their noses and outright rejected the federal government’s demands.
- Logan’s office declined to open the thumb drive, citing data-privacy and security protocols that treat such devices as insecure.
- Weber stated that the department had not provided the list to her office and criticized the claims as unsubstantiated, noting that earlier assertions of roughly 190,000 noncitizens on California rolls lacked supporting methodology.
- State law already requires registrants to attest to citizenship under penalty of perjury; California maintains that its processes comply with the National Voter Registration Act and Help America Vote Act. Officials also point to the NVRA’s 90-day quiet period before federal elections, which limits systematic removals.
Here's a secret PCC uncovered: While the public focus remains on alleged noncitizen registrations, a quieter but parallel federal-state data effort addresses another long-standing list-maintenance issue: deceased voters.
- Once voter rolls are shared or cross-referenced with federal systems, names can be matched against Social Security Administration death records (including the Death Master File) via tools such as the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) database.
States including North Carolina have recently identified tens of thousands of deceased individuals still on their rolls through such matching and begun the legally required process of removal. Federal statutes and the NVRA require “reasonable efforts” to keep rolls accurate by removing those who have died, and expanded access to SSA data through DHS systems is facilitating that work.
With ballots already circulating in California’s universal mail system and Election Day three weeks away, the lawsuit and underlying data demands place courts at the center of a dispute over how far federal authorities may go in requiring citizenship verification and list cleanup.
Question: Does removing illegal aliens, dead people, one-person multiple voters, and phantom fraud registrations from the voter rolls mean Democrats may never win another election?
Please share your opinion in the comment section below.
Replies