WASHINGTON, Oct 24 (Reuters) – Less than two weeks before US midterm elections, the Department of Justice has warned election officials across California that they could be targets of federal “scrutiny” if they refuse to help identify suspected noncitizens on voter rolls and set aside their mail ballots pending citizenship checks, the New York Times reported.
According to the letters sent on Friday to all 58 California counties, local officials were given 48 hours to help determine the citizenship status of individuals on federal government lists, the Times wrote.
The letters warned counties they could face “significant federal scrutiny” if they failed to comply.
According to the Times, the letters included lists of people whom the Justice Department believes to be illegally registered to vote and described them as a subset of the 20,000 people throughout California it identified last week as possible noncitizens who may have received ballots.
For those whose “citizenship status cannot be confirmed, we request that you immediately instruct the appropriate elections official to segregate — not cancel — those individuals’ vote-by-mail ballots until their citizenship status can be determined,” it quoted the letter as saying.
The Justice Department and the California attorney general’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
In the run-up to next month’s midterm elections, the Justice Department has ramped up prosecutions of people accused of illegally voting while not holding US citizenship.
The White House has also pushed federal agencies to accelerate their review of at least 47 state voter rolls obtained by the Department of Homeland Security, according to an internal email seen by Reuters.
On October 16, the DOJ warned Los Angeles County and California election officials they could be liable as abettors of a federal crime if they count mail ballots returned by more than 20,000 people the Trump administration says are probably noncitizens.
California officials have rejected the moves, saying the federal government has not provided sufficient information about how it identified the alleged noncitizens.
California Secretary of State Shirley Weber has accused the administration of attempting to unlawfully access protected voter data and purge voter rolls, saying such efforts undermine confidence in elections.
(Reporting by David Brunnstrom; Editing by Sergio Non and Nia Williams)
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