WASHINGTON — The Justice Department is threatening legal action against California unless state and local officials review a list of potential noncitizens on their voter rolls. Acting Deputy Attorney General R. Trent McCotter sent letters Tuesday to California Secretary of State Shirley Weber and Los Angeles County Clerk-Recorder Dean Logan with a list of names of potential noncitizens identified by the federal government. The letters demand that they review the list by noon on Thursday. “Allowing non-citizens to vote cancels citizens’ votes,” McCotter wrote in the letter, which was obtained by NBC News. McCotter wrote that the Justice Department provided a password-protected USB flash drive with a list of people the federal government “believes are likely to be non-citizens who were sent a mail-in ballot” for the 2026 election. He asked that county election officials “segregate, not cancel, those people’s mail-in ballots” until their citizenship status is determined. “This should not be controversial, as the criminal statute is clear: only American citizens can vote in federal elections,” a Justice Department spokesperson said in a statement. “It is a federal crime for noncitizens to vote in U.S. elections, and the Department of Justice is calling on California to make sure that doesn’t happen.” The letters were first reported by Reuters. Justin Levitt, an NBC News contributor and Justice Department official during the Obama administration, said the federal government has no authority to support their demands. “You can send the letter,” he said. “California doesn’t have to do anything about it.” Federal law prohibits systemic list maintenance within 90 days of a federal election. At this point, with less than three weeks until Election Day, the only changes to voter rolls may come from individualized information, such as notification from the Social Security Administration that someone has died. A Justice Department spokesperson said the department is asking California to sequester ballots, not change its voter list. In a statement Wednesday, Logan said his office had not accessed the USB flash drive the Justice Department provided “because doing so would conflict with established data privacy and information security protocols.” He added: “We do not consider the device to be a secure medium.” “Maintaining accurate voter registration records is a fundamental responsibility of our office,” Logan said in the statement. “Federal and state laws are clear about how voter eligibility is established, and any action to remove a voter from eligibility must be based on verifiable information, not unconfirmed data match claims.” Weber did not respond to requests for comment. All registered voters in California receive mail-in ballots, which began being sent out on October 5. The legal threats came amid a broader campaign by the Trump administration to focus on what voting experts say is a relatively rare phenomenon of noncitizen voting. Trump has long made baseless claims that the vote is marred by widespread fraud. Election officials in several states, including Georgia, Connecticut, Nevada and Washington state, say they have received federal subpoenas in recent months to obtain election records. Some officials said they fear these actions were designed to raise potential legal challenges after the midterm elections. “What we’ve seen is some foundation laid for post-election challenges,” said Stuart Holmes, director of elections in Washington state. “Whether it be the seizure of voting equipment, the ballots themselves, the tabulation equipment…we are preparing for any and all eventualities in that case.” Nevada Secretary of State Cisco Aguilar, a Democrat, said officials in his state are also preparing for possible challenges to the November results. He added that he viewed the administration’s actions as “an effort to discourage people from participating in the elections.” “You have a president who is trying to choose the base of voters instead of the voters choosing the elected, and that is not how our democracy works,” he said in an interview. “It is the people who control our elections, and when you try to remove that control, you do it through intimidation, you do it through threats, and you do it by trying to dissuade people from participating.” Levitt agreed with election officials’ conclusions. “Are they laying the groundwork to say the vote was fraudulent? Of course they are, 100% they are,” he said, referring to the Trump administration. “Is the boy who cried the wolf going to cry? Yes, that’s what the boy who cried the wolf does.” Since Trump took office, his administration has filed more than 100 cases involving allegations of noncitizen voting. According to the US Census Bureau, more than 154 million people voted in the 2024 election. During the second Trump administration, the Justice Department sought voter registration data from every state in the country. He has filed lawsuits against 30 states and Washington, D.C., for refusing.
