The Trump administration says it has a list of more than 20,000 noncitizens registered to vote in California. Last week, someone outside the government finally got to check it.

What they found is that more than 40% of the people on the list don't appear in California's voter file at all.

On Sunday, November 1 — two days before Election Day — the Justice Department responded. It didn't fix the list. It asked a federal judge to consider whether the people who checked it should face criminal contempt charges, the Associated Press reported.

What the check found

The administration has been using the list to pressure California. Last month, it handed Los Angeles County a password-protected thumb drive of names and gave officials 48 hours to review it and set aside ballots from those people, without saying how many were on it or how it decided they weren't citizens.

The Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights, known as CHIRLA, sued over how the government is using that list. On Friday, October 30, U.S. District Chief Judge James Boasberg let the group see the government's data on the 20,000 people. He ordered them not to reveal any names and to use the data only to argue why they have the right to bring the case.

On Saturday, CHIRLA's lawyers filed court papers reporting what their analysis found:

• More than 40% of the people on the list do not appear in the state's voter file.
• 22 people on the list were likely naturalized U.S. citizens.
• Thousands more U.S. citizens appeared to be on it as well.

The analysis was done by the University of California, Los Angeles's Voting Rights Project, which filed the case.

In other words, a list the federal government has been using to demand that ballots be set aside appears to be full of people who aren't registered at all — and of citizens.

The government's answer: investigate the lawyers

The Justice Department's Sunday filing defended the list's accuracy. Then it argued that the analysis broke Judge Boasberg's order, because comparing the government's list to California's full voter file "has no relevance to whether the particular plaintiffs in this case have standing." It called the report "political grandstanding."

And it suggested the judge refer the matter to the Justice Department itself for a possible criminal contempt investigation.

A spokesman for UCLA's Voting Rights Project said the plaintiffs' lawyers and experts "fully complied with the Court's orders."

So the department that is using the list is asking to investigate the people who found the errors in it — and to do the investigating itself.

Losing in court, again and again

The Trump administration has lost many of its court fights over its lists of supposed noncitizen voters, AP reported.

• A federal judge in California rejected the demand to force election officials to set aside ballots from people on the list, writing that last-minute orders like that could "wreak havoc" on the election. Two appeals judges agreed.
• On Friday night, U.S. District Judge Trina L. Thompson in San Francisco barred the department from demanding that election offices remove possible noncitizens from the rolls, separate their ballots, or threaten legal action. The department appealed on Sunday.

California election officials say the list is riddled with errors and that there is no way to do the careful work the law requires before removing anyone from the rolls in the last days before an election.

The department has also subpoenaed election offices and warned election officials across the country that they could face criminal charges.

A problem that barely exists

People already swear they are U.S. citizens when they register to vote, and they risk a felony if they vote when they aren't eligible. Real cases are rare. In Texas, Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton spent more than a year hunting noncitizen voters and found three.

The administration says its California list was built from the state's own registration data checked against federal citizenship records. An outside check of that list suggests otherwise — and the government's first move was to go after the people who ran it.

What the court filings show

A UCLA analysis of the Trump administration's list of 20,000 supposed noncitizen voters in California found that more than 40% of the people on it aren't on the state's voter rolls, and that it includes likely U.S. citizens. Two days before Election Day, the Justice Department defended the list and asked a federal judge to consider referring the immigrant rights group's lawyers to the Justice Department for a criminal contempt investigation. The administration has lost a string of court fights over these lists, including a Friday ruling barring it from demanding that ballots be set aside.

Source

• Justice Department Urges Sanctions for Analysis Critical of Its Noncitizen Voting Claims — The Associated Press, via The Washington Sun, November 1, 2026