The legal fight over California’s voter rolls just took a sharp new turn.
President Trump’s Justice Department is now asking a federal judge to consider sanctions and a possible criminal-contempt referral after an immigrant-rights group published an analysis of the administration’s list of suspected noncitizen voters.
The dispute centers on more than 20,000 names the federal government says may belong to noncitizens registered to vote in California.
On Friday, Chief U.S. District Judge James Boasberg allowed attorneys for the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles, known as CHIRLA, and the UCLA Voting Rights Project to examine the federal data.
The judge imposed clear limits: the attorneys could not disclose the names, and the information was to be used for arguments over whether the plaintiffs have legal standing to challenge the administration’s voter-list program.
The next day, the plaintiffs filed an analysis claiming that 8,880 of the 20,930 names — about 42 percent — could not be matched to California’s current voter file. They also said at least 22 people appeared to be naturalized U.S. citizens and argued that many more citizens may have been swept into the list.
But the Justice Department fired back Sunday.
According to The Associated Press, DOJ argued that the plaintiffs’ broader comparison with California’s voter file had nothing to do with the narrow standing question before Boasberg. The department characterized the analysis as political grandstanding and said it violated the court’s restriction on how the data could be used.
The government suggested that Boasberg consider referring the matter to the Justice Department for investigation of possible criminal contempt of court.
First Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli was even more blunt in his public response. He called the analysis bogus, questioned how the group could reliably determine both voter-registration and citizenship status, and said the report conflicted with sworn evidence already filed by the government.
UCLA’s Voting Rights Project rejected DOJ’s accusation. A spokesman said the plaintiffs’ attorneys and experts fully complied with the judge’s orders.
That competing claim is now squarely in Boasberg’s hands: the plaintiffs say their analysis was necessary to show that CHIRLA members and eligible voters could be injured by the federal list, while DOJ says the filing went beyond the limited purpose the court authorized.
The underlying battle began when federal officials compared California voter-registration information with immigration and citizenship records.
In its October 15 lawsuit announcement, the Justice Department said California had refused to review the federal list or work with federal agencies to verify citizenship before counting affected mail ballots. DOJ said Homeland Security investigators used public voter-registration records, federal immigration data, and multiple verification methods to identify the names.
The department asked the court to prevent California from tabulating ballots tied to the flagged people until their eligibility could be determined, while acknowledging that its analysis and review remained ongoing.
California officials and voting-rights groups have challenged both the list’s accuracy and the federal government’s authority to force last-minute changes to the state’s election procedures.
Essayli has argued throughout the dispute that California’s reliance on voter attestations leaves officials without an independent citizenship check. On Sunday, he said California could resolve the fight quickly by using the same federal citizenship database it already relies on for Medi-Cal applicants.
The stakes are bigger than a single spreadsheet.
DOJ says the list reflects a careful review using federal immigration records and that allowing an ineligible ballot to be counted dilutes the votes of citizens. The plaintiffs say matching systems can misidentify naturalized citizens and that the administration’s demands risk intimidating lawful voters just before Election Day.
The UCLA Voting Rights Project said Boasberg initially ordered the disclosure so the plaintiffs could determine whether eligible voters had been wrongly flagged and establish their standing to sue. Its October 30 account said the order required DOJ to turn over the list that afternoon while barring the plaintiffs from releasing individual names.
The project said the review was intended to test the list’s impact on CHIRLA members and other eligible voters, and it framed the disclosure as part of an emergency challenge to federal pressure on state and local election officials.
Now the court must decide whether their public filing did exactly that — or crossed the line the judge drew.
With the midterm election just days away, the fight over who appears on the list, how it was built, and who may inspect it is no longer just an argument about election administration. It has become a potential contempt fight involving the Justice Department, an activist organization, and the lawyers challenging one of the Trump administration’s most consequential election-integrity actions.
This is a Guest Post from our friends over at WLTReport. View the original article here.
The post Trump DOJ Fires Back, Seeks Contempt Review Over California Noncitizen Voter-List Analysis appeared first on 100PercentFedUp.com.
Continue reading...
[H/T 100PercentFedUp]
