DOJ orders California to review alleged noncitizen mail voters within 48 hours

The Justice Department is threatening California with possible legal action over what it says are noncitizens believed to have received mail ballots for next month’s midterm elections

The Trump administration has placed California on a 48-hour clock — demanding a review of suspected noncitizen voters or a showdown in court before the midterm elections.

The Justice Department has ordered California to review a list of people whom the federal government believes may have received mail-in ballots for the upcoming election despite not being U.S. citizens.

The Trump administration is giving California 48 hours to purge its voter rolls of people it thinks are noncitizens, or else. A letter first obtained by Reuters details the administration’s demand for “immediate action to ensure that noncitizens do not vote in the upcoming federal election.” The Department of Justice wants California to scroll through a flash drive of “likely noncitizen” voters that it provided. It’s not clear what evidence the administration is basing that off of. The move comes just a few weeks after the Supreme Court ruled to allow Homeland Security to revive the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements, also known as SAVE. The Trump administration states it’ll have “no choice but to seek emergency relief” if California doesn’t comply. That could include purging voters before the midterm elections, which will take place in less than three weeks. Early voting began in California on October 5.While the administration hasn’t revealed how large the thumb drive file is, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin thinks that there are over 190,000 noncitizens registered to vote in California, a number that California Secretary of State Shirley Weber said she had “serious doubts” about the “reliability” and “accuracy” of. This is just the most recent chapter of President Trump’s monthslong campaign to sue states for their voter registration data in order to target undocumented immigrants. In reality, noncitizen voting remains incredibly marginal. A Census Bureau analysis of voting in the 2020 election found that roughly 24,000 noncitizens were included in a report that examined over 128 million voting records. In 2016, meanwhile, noncitizen votes accounted for just 0.0001 percent of the votes cast, according to the Brennan Center for Justice.

The Justice Department on Tuesday gave California officials 48 hours to review a list of alleged noncitizen voters or face legal action