DOJ Gives California 48 Hours to Review Flagged Voter List

The Justice Department has ordered California to review a list of names of possible noncitizens who received mail ballots. CBS News reviewed the October 13 letter from acting Deputy Attorney General Trent McCotter. It gives state officials 48 hours to determine the citizenship status of each person on the list, which arrived on a password-protected thumb drive.

The letter also spells out what McCotter wants officials to do about names whose citizenship the state cannot confirm on its own, CBS News reports. Reuters, which first reported the letter, describes it as a threat to California. CBS News has asked California's secretary of state for comment.

Dean Logan, the registrar-recorder and county clerk of Los Angeles County, confirmed he received the letter. He said it came with a USB drive and a handwritten note giving the password, and that his office has not opened the drive because doing so would conflict with its data privacy and information security protocols. Logan said the letter does not state how many people are on the list or describe the records, and that any action on a voter's eligibility must rest on verifiable information rather than unconfirmed data matching. A person with knowledge of the matter told CBS News similar letters went to other counties in the state.

The letter follows a July message from Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin telling California's secretary of state the government believed noncitizens were on its voter rolls, CBS News reports. The Justice Department's Civil Rights Division has filed 31 lawsuits seeking unredacted voter rolls and has said it intends to share the data with Homeland Security to screen for noncitizens. Harmeet Dhillon, who leads that division, wrote to all 50 states in July warning of criminal action if they knowingly left noncitizens on their rolls, according to CBS News.

Since President Trump took office, the department has charged more than 100 people with voter fraud-related crimes, CBS News reports. A Reuters data analysis published last month found states may have added more than 30,000 self-declared noncitizens to voter rolls since 2000 because of software glitches and clerical errors in processing driver's licenses and state IDs.