DOJ Keeps Threat to Sue California Over Its Voter Rolls

UPDATE Oct 15, 2026 6:10 PM CDT

The Justice Department on Thursday followed through on its threat against top election officials in California and Los Angeles County, filing a lawsuit that claims they were planning to count the midterm votes of more than 20,000 people the federal government says probably aren't US citizens. The suit seeks an injunction preventing the votes from being counted until their citizenship is verified, the Washington Post reports. The suit is part of the Trump administration's "ongoing, dangerous, reckless, scorched-earth, widespread attempt to advance conspiracy theories about widespread voter fraud that doesn't exist," Attorney General Rob Bonta, a Democrat, said in a news conference.

Oct 14, 2026 7:23 AM CDT

The Justice Department has threatened legal action against California unless state officials investigate voters the department claims are "likely noncitizens." In a Tuesday letter, acting Deputy Attorney General Trent McCotter said the state had 48 hours to review a list of names provided to officials in Los Angeles County, in what Reuters describes as "part of an unprecedented effort to find evidence of voter fraud" ahead of the midterm elections.

The directive orders the state to withhold mail-in ballots from those named until their citizenship status is verified. Any ballots already received should not be counted, while incoming ballots should be "segregated," according to the letter. Though studies show noncitizen voting is rare, Trump's Justice Department sees it as a significant problem, recently announcing unlawful voting and fraudulent voter registration charges against 64 foreign nationals in 17 states, per Fox News.

The notice to California could indicate the department is prepared to challenge ballots in the coming weeks, per Reuters. It comes days after a federal judge blocked the DOJ's policy of checking state voter rolls against a federal database and urging the removal of suspected noncitizens, per the Washington Post. US District Judge Sparkle Sooknanan, who found federal privacy and procedural law violations, cited evidence that millions of US citizens have been wrongly listed as noncitizens.