The Department of Justice wants California to quarantine the ballots of 20,000 people it calls "likely" noncitizens. Then Los Angeles County checked a sample of 200 names and found that, of the voters whose birthplace was meaningfully reported, 38.9 percent said they were born in the United States. That is a funny way to catch a foreigner.
The feds delivered this list on a thumb drive of unknown origin, which tells you everything about the care that went into it.
A Thumb Drive of Unknown Origin and a Dream
Here is how the saga began, per NPR. Last week, the Justice Department handed Los Angeles County a thumb drive containing roughly 20,000 names that investigators at the Department of Homeland Security say are "likely noncitizens" registered to vote somewhere in California.
LA County officials declined to plug it in. Reasonable. You do not stick a mystery thumb drive into a government computer, and anyone who has sat through a single cybersecurity training knows it. The next day, the DOJ emailed a spreadsheet with the same list.
So the federal government's big move to protect the sanctity of California elections began with an attempt to get county officials to violate basic computer hygiene. Inspiring stuff.
The Sample Says the List Is Unreliable
LA County pulled a sample of 200 names to see how the federal data holds up. The preliminary conclusion, written by Assistant Registrar-Recorder Monica Flores in a court declaration, was blunt: the list "is unreliable."
Of the voters where birthplace was meaningfully reported, 38.9 percent indicated they were born in the United States. Flores called that "strong evidence of citizenship." It is also just the law. Outside of extremely narrow exceptions, anyone born on American soil is automatically a citizen.
There are caveats, and we should be straight about them. The review is preliminary, quality control is ongoing, and it is unclear how many people that percentage represents in total. California's online registration asks for place of birth, but the field is not mandatory. Still, a list of "likely noncitizens" that keeps turning up people who say they were born here is not a list. It is a rumor with a spreadsheet.
Dead Registrations and Ghost Voters
The sample gets stranger. Of the 200 records, 112 belonged to people whose registrations are canceled or inactive. Around 70 percent of the people sampled had no voting history at all.
Sit with that. The DOJ is asking California to segregate ballots over an alleged crisis of noncitizens voting, and most of the people in the sample were not even active registrants, and most had never cast a vote. This is a plot to steal an election by people who did not show up.
The list also does not even stay in its lane geographically. Out of the 20,000 names, only 7,035 had addresses in Los Angeles County, and some were duplicates, according to a separate filing by County Registrar Dean Logan.
Even the DOJ Admits It Might Be Wrong
Acting Deputy Attorney General Trent McCotter acknowledged the problem at a Monday press conference. "There may be some names on there who it turns out ultimately are citizens, we're not perfect," he said.
We're not perfect. That is the official legal standard for asking a state to set aside thousands of ballots days before an election. The department's own spokesperson, Kiersten Pels, answered questions about LA County's analysis by saying California "cannot facilitate the violation of federal law" and accusing the state of "willful blindness."
Notice what that response does not do. It does not say the list is accurate. It does not explain the methodology, which the administration has defended without ever fully laying it out publicly. It just reframes the state's refusal to trust the list as a crime. And this is not the first time the numbers have wobbled: DHS has already acknowledged that the noncitizen figures it touted on voter rolls were inflated.
Charging Green-Card Holders Who Thought They Could Vote
On Monday, the DOJ also announced criminal charges against 28 people from the list. All 28 are legal permanent residents, meaning green-card holders. Research has shown that in the rare cases when noncitizens vote, it is often green-card holders who misunderstand the rules rather than people running a fraud scheme.
Kamlesh Shah, 68, told Sacramento TV station KCRA 3 he thought he could vote because he had a Real ID. "I'm feeling very depressed, very full of anxiety. I'm disabled," he said. "I'm trying to get an attorney, hopefully I can have the charges dismissed."
That is who the government is putting up as the face of the threat. A 68-year-old disabled man with a Real ID and a heart condition.
California Calls It a Political Stunt
The state's response, filed Tuesday, did not hold back. "At best, this litigation is a reckless political stunt," California wrote. "At worst, it threatens to disenfranchise thousands of Californians this election."
California also argues that doing what the DOJ demands would be unfeasible this close to the election and would likely break federal and state election laws. So the feds want the state to run a mass citizenship audit in the final stretch of voting, using a list the feds themselves concede has errors, and they want ballots set aside before they are counted.
If even a handful of real citizens get their ballots stuck in limbo because they landed on a bad list, that is the disenfranchisement the state is warning about. The government would not need to prove a single fraudulent vote to throw people's votes into doubt.
The Dingo Take
You are being asked to believe that a list the government calls "likely" accurate, delivered on a thumb drive nobody would open, justifies freezing the ballots of 20,000 people. You are being asked to believe it even though the first spot check turned up a pile of people who say they were born here, and most of the sampled names were inactive or had never voted. Do you buy that? Because the DOJ's own official said, out loud, "we're not perfect."
This is how it works. Announce a scary number. Charge a few green-card holders who made an honest mistake so the headlines look tough. When the number falls apart, say the state is hiding something. DHS already had to admit its earlier noncitizen figures were inflated, and Trump's own numbers on this subject have been shown to be wrong. At some point the pattern is the point.
Real election integrity means checking your work before you tell a state to throw sand in the gears of a vote. It does not mean handing over a spreadsheet, shrugging, and daring the people who run elections to prove a negative in a couple of weeks. If you want to know who is being disenfranchised here, start with the folks on that list who were born in America.
Comments