California has now said it in federal court, in its own filing: when it comes to checking whether a registered voter is actually a U.S. citizen, the state has nothing to go on but the voter's own word. In an affidavit filed in the Justice Department's voter-rolls lawsuit, an official with the Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder's office, Monica Flores, stated that the registrar "has no information beyond the voter's own attestation with which to determine citizenship." No database check. No document. No independent verification of any kind — a signature on a form, taken at face value, in the largest county in America.
The admission landed in the middle of an escalating court fight. The Justice Department has given California a list of more than 20,000 registered voters it identifies as likely noncitizens — 7,035 of them with Los Angeles County addresses — and has asked a federal judge to order ballots from people on the list set aside until their citizenship can be verified. California refused to act on the list, and the department sued. On Monday, federal prosecutors announced criminal charges against 28 people on that list, all lawful permanent residents accused of election or immigration-related offenses, at a Los Angeles news conference held under a "Protect the Vote" banner.
Bill Essayli, the First Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Central District of California, seized on the county's filing on Tuesday. "Massive concession: Los Angeles election officials just told a federal court they have no independent way to verify citizenship beyond what voters attest. (They simply take their word for it)," Essayli wrote. "Under federal law, only citizens may vote in federal elections. Yet California has not acted on the list of 20,000 suspected noncitizens or agreed to set aside their ballots. American citizens' votes are being diluted in California."
"California cannot facilitate the violation of federal law. We notified California that noncitizens are likely registered to vote, and we asked the state to independently verify the citizenship of any ballots cast by people on a list that we provided. It refused to do so. Federal law doesn't permit this willful blindness." — DOJ deputy press secretary Kiersten Pels
White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller put it more bluntly: "California admits they knowingly allow anyone in the world — illegal, foreigner, trespasser — to vote in federal elections." The Justice Department says its list was built through a multilayered investigation involving U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and Homeland Security Investigations, matching voter-roll information against immigration records and other government data.
The county and the governor's office are fighting back on the list itself. In its opposition filing on Tuesday, Los Angeles County said it sampled the records DOJ sent and found that 25.8% recorded a place of birth in the United States, more than 71% had never voted, and 42.9% were already canceled registrations, with another 4.6% inactive — only 42.4% were active, and just 45% had even been mailed a ballot for this election. The county argues the federal list carries no confidence ratings and none of the unique identifiers its registration system uses, forcing workers to match names, birth dates and addresses by hand. Gov. Gavin Newsom repeated Tuesday that federal authorities first claimed 190,000 noncitizens were registered in California, then reduced the figure to 20,000, then announced charges against just 28 people — and conceded some of those charged may never have voted and some names on the list may turn out to be legitimate citizens. His office said noncitizen registration "does happen in isolated instances" but is "so rare" it amounts to about 0.0001% of California voters.
The stakes are immediate. Early voting is already underway, Election Day is two weeks out, and a federal judge must now decide whether thousands of California ballots get counted or held while a citizenship question the state admits it cannot answer gets resolved. The department's position is that the law is not optional: only citizens may vote in federal elections, and a state that registers voters on the honor system and then refuses to check a federal list is choosing not to know. As Essayli put it: "American citizens' votes are being diluted in California."
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