Trump Administration's Noncitizen Voter Lists Could Be Used to Contest Close Midterm Results, Reuters Reports
The Justice Department has told five states it found noncitizens on their voter rolls and is suing California over some 20,000 ballots. Legal experts told Reuters the unpublished lists could become the basis for challenging close results after Tuesday - even as courts keep rejecting the effort, and the District itself is among the jurisdictions sued for their rolls.
As Americans head to the polls on Tuesday, lists the Trump administration has compiled of possible noncitizen voters could be used to contest the validity of the results, Reuters reported on Sunday. The administration has acknowledged sending letters to election officials in five states - California, Washington, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Nevada - as of October 30, saying it identified noncitizens on their voter rolls, according to a Justice Department document seen by Reuters. In an October 13 letter, the department demanded that California not count ballots from about 20,000 registered voters it said federal agencies reasonably believe are likely noncitizens without first verifying their citizenship, and warned that election workers who processed them could face prosecution. State officials rebuffed requests to set aside the ballots of people on the lists, which have not been made public, and the Justice Department is now suing California to block the state from counting any ballots from the list of 20,000 voters. California says its safeguards against noncitizen voting are robust.
Noncitizen voting is illegal and can lead to jail time, fines and deportation, and the White House says it is a significant problem requiring aggressive enforcement. Available evidence indicates it is exceedingly rare: a Reuters investigation in July found just 129 cases in which noncitizens were federally charged with voting illegally since Congress created the federal voting-by-aliens statute in 1996, many apparently stemming from confusion or administrative errors. The lists were built from state voter data the administration aggressively sought: at least 16 states, including Alabama and Texas, complied voluntarily with requests for unredacted rolls, while 30 states, including California and New York, as well as Washington, D.C., have not complied and have been sued for their rolls. Courts have rejected 27 of those efforts so far, with many judges finding the federal government has no role in determining voter eligibility. The Department of Homeland Security obtained at least partial voter-roll data from at least 47 states, and federal investigators matched it against government databases to identify potential noncitizens, according to an internal DHS email reviewed by Reuters.
The lists could provide a basis for challenging close election results even if the administration struggles to prevail in court, three legal experts told Reuters: a losing candidate could argue that suspected noncitizen votes made it impossible to determine the rightful winner, and the Justice Department could pursue other avenues to try to block certification. Such challenges would face significant hurdles, partly because reviews of the lists have found that many people on them are U.S. citizens. On October 28, a federal judge in California rejected the Justice Department's bid to block ballots from the 20,000 voters, saying the move would "wreak havoc" on the November 3 elections and questioning the reliability of the list; a federal appeals court upheld the ruling on October 30, citing a material risk of disenfranchising eligible voters. Acting U.S. Deputy Attorney General Trent McCotter said on Saturday that the department would "probably" appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, and acknowledged the California list could include U.S. citizens.
