DOJ Sued California Over 20,000 Possible Noncitizen Voters. Sacramento Says It Never Got the List.
Sunday, October 18, 2026. The Justice Department sued California on October 15 after the state and Los Angeles County did not act within 48 hours on a list of voters the department says are likely noncitizens who were mailed ballots. A RealClearPolitics editorial reprint, headlined “CA Dems’ Refusal To Check on Noncitizen Voting Is Damning,” argues the refusal itself is telling.
There is a real accountability question here and a real dispute over whether the demand was lawful or even deliverable. This page sets out both, including the one fact the two sides contradict.
- 20,000+alleged likely noncitizensThe DOJ’s figure, per Liberty Nation and Al Jazeera; the department has not published how the list was built.
- 48 hrsdeadlineLetters dated Oct. 13 from Trump DOJ Acting Deputy Attorney General R. Trent McCotter, per NBC News.
- ~190,000DHS estimate for California in JulyWeber says DHS refused to provide the methodology, per Fox News; the figure is DHS’s, not California’s.
- 185names in Nevada, all citizensPer Nevada officials, ABC News; DHS disputes this, per Liberty Nation.
California mailed ballots to every registered voter starting October 5, for the November 3 election. On Tuesday, October 13, McCotter sent letters to California Secretary of State Shirley Weber (D) and Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder Dean Logan, along with a password-protected thumb drive listing people the department “believes are likely noncitizens who were sent a vote-by-mail ballot.” The ask: “segregate — not cancel” those ballots until citizenship is determined. McCotter wrote: “Allowing noncitizens to vote cancels citizen votes.”
On Thursday, October 15, the department sued the State of California in federal court; Liberty Nation reports Weber and Logan are also named, though we could not confirm that from the docket. It asked for an injunction against counting the flagged ballots until status is verified. The suit rests on the Supremacy Clause, per ABC News, and was filed by officials in the deputy attorney general’s office, not the Civil Rights Division, which ABC says has lost repeatedly on voter-roll demands. No ruling had been reported.
Weber says the DOJ never gave her office a list, that it lacks legal authority, and that DHS refused her written request for the methodology behind its July claim of about 190,000 noncitizens on California’s voter rolls. She says “California has robust state law requirements that only U.S. citizens can register to vote.” Logan said his office would not open the drive, saying he does not consider the device a secure medium, and adding that removals “must be based on verifiable information, not assertions of unconfirmed data matching.” Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) called the suit a “sad, desperate attempt.” Attorney General Rob Bonta (D-CA) called it a push for “conspiracy theories about widespread voter fraud that doesn’t exist,” per Liberty Nation.
The contradiction: NBC reports the letters went to both Weber and Logan, while Weber says no list reached her office. The drive went to Los Angeles County, and Fox reports that federal officials gave the list to Los Angeles County election officials. It may be that both statements are accurate. It is also why the “refusal” framing is not simple: the state says it was never given anything to check, and the county declined to plug in an unvetted drive.
The editorial’s argument, as we could see it, is that officials who were confident in their rolls would simply check. The DOJ’s request was narrow: set the ballots aside, not purge them. Liberty Nation, which backs the department, notes the true number “could be zero just as well as it could be 20,000,” and that only a check settles it.
Other reporting supports the concern that California does not track this. The Daily Wire, citing public-records requests by the American Center for Law and Justice, says the Secretary of State’s registration system has no cancellation category for noncitizenship and that the state Department of Justice has no formal written policy for illegal-voting referrals. Applicants attest to citizenship under penalty of perjury. Liberty Nation also cites about 81,000 California registrants it says matched DHS records and reports of 2018 DMV motor-voter errors that wrongly registered some people, including noncitizens. Those figures are attributed, not audited.
Federal law restricts systematic list maintenance in the 90 days before a federal election, per NBC News. Justin Levitt, a former Obama-era Justice Department official writing as an NBC contributor, says California “doesn’t have to do anything about it.” The list’s source is unexplained, and Nevada’s experience is the cautionary tale: officials there say a DHS list was cut to 185 names, all verified citizens, though DHS disputes that and says about 14,000 remain under review.
The federal citizenship database SAVE is also contested. Per Fox News, a federal judge found DHS’s revamped version illegal in June, citing privacy rights and wrongful-removal risk, and the Supreme Court’s September 25 emergency order lets states use it for now. A separate October ruling found the DOJ unlawfully sought state voter rolls to check against it, per Al Jazeera, which also reports a federal judge in Florida struck down the federal noncitizen-voting statute in an early-October ruling. ABC News reports the administration has had more than two dozen straight court losses over voter-roll demands.
Documented: the October 13 letters and thumb drive, the 48-hour deadline, the October 15 suit against California (Weber and Logan are also named, per Liberty Nation), and the officials’ public statements.
Disputed: whether Weber’s office was given a list; whether the DOJ list is accurate; whether the 20,000 figure and the 190,000 DHS estimate withstand scrutiny.
Unknown: how the list was built, how many names are real noncitizens, and how the court will rule.
California’s refusal to open an unverified thumb drive is not proof that it fears what is on it, and the DOJ’s refusal to explain how it built the list is not proof the list is wrong. Only a method, a count and a court can settle it, and the ballots are already in the mail.
