More than 40 per cent of the individuals flagged by the Trump administration as possible noncitizen voters in California do not appear on the state’s voter rolls, according to an analysis submitted to a federal court on Saturday. The findings have raised fresh questions about the accuracy of a list the US Justice Department has used to pressure election officials ahead of the midterm elections.
The analysis, conducted by two researchers from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), examined 20,930 names that the Justice Department had asked California officials to treat as potential illegal voters and separate their ballots during the Election Day count.
According to the court filing by the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights (CHIRLA) and UCLA’s Voting Rights Project, 8,880 names, or 42 per cent of the list, could not be matched to anyone in California’s current voter records. The researchers also identified at least 22 US citizens on the list, while warning that many more could have been incorrectly flagged.
The filing argued that the government’s list could put eligible voters at risk of being wrongly excluded from the electoral process. It was cosigned by Xavier Becerra, the Democratic candidate for California governor and an adviser to the UCLA Voting Rights Project.
The Trump administration has defended its efforts to identify potential noncitizen voters, arguing that election officials must take steps to protect the integrity of the vote. However, several judges have rejected its demand that California separate ballots cast by people on the list, while state and local officials have raised concerns about inaccuracies.
Bill Essayli, head of the US Attorney’s office in Los Angeles, dismissed the findings on Saturday, describing them as a “bogus report” produced by what he called an activist immigrant-rights group.
President Donald Trump also criticised the court rulings, claiming on social media that the Justice Department had uncovered “20,000, but potentially Hundreds of Thousands, and maybe even Millions” of fraudulent votes. He questioned why judges had rejected the administration’s efforts to address what he described as election fraud.
The controversy intensified after a federal judge on Friday ordered the Justice Department to share the list with the plaintiffs. The administration appealed a separate ruling that barred it from sending further demands to California election officials.
The UCLA researchers also found that nearly 7,500 naturalised citizens were highly likely to have been incorrectly identified as ineligible under the government’s methodology. They said the removal of voter identification numbers from the list made it harder to establish whether individuals were registered voters or duplicate entries.
Election officials have argued that the administration’s last-minute demands leave insufficient time for the detailed checks required before anyone can be removed from voter rolls.
The Justice Department has maintained that failing to identify ineligible voters also carries risks. “Every ballot cast by an ineligible voter cancels out the vote of an American citizen,” department spokesperson Kiersten V. Pels said, adding that the department makes “no apology for protecting those votes.”
