DOJ Letters Give California 48 Hours on 'Likely Noncitizen' Voter List, Demand LA County Segregate Ballots

On or about Tuesday, October 13, 2026, Justice Department personnel delivered a password-protected thumb drive to Los Angeles County election officials, and the Department gave California officials 48 hours to review a list of alleged noncitizen voters or face legal action, according to letters reviewed by Reuters. The letters, written by acting Deputy Attorney General R. Trent McCotter to Secretary of State Shirley Weber and Registrar-Recorder Dean Logan, say the drive holds the names of people the federal government believes are likely noncitizens. They demand that the state and county segregate returned mail-in ballots from voters on the list and not tabulate them until citizenship has been determined, and say the government will seek emergency relief otherwise. McCotter wrote that allowing noncitizens to vote cancels citizen votes. A Justice Department spokeswoman confirmed the letters exist. The list is the Department’s own belief; neither source reports how many names it contains or how the Department compiled it, and California’s response is not yet reported.

The demand follows a record of failed attempts to obtain state voter rolls: Reuters reports the Department has sued 30 states that refused to hand over rolls and lost 26 of those cases without winning one. Rather than win access through the courts, the Department is now handing a county a list built from its own data and asking it to hold ballots, which moves the fight from the voter roll to individual returned ballots weeks before the midterms. See 2026-09-16–doj-sends-five-grand-jury-subpoenas-san-diego-county-registrar-voter-records for the parallel grand-jury route into California registrars and 2025-09-09–doj-demands-voter-data-centralized-database for the original roll demand.