More than four in ten names on a Justice Department list of suspected noncitizen voters in California do not match anyone on the state’s current voter file, according to a first outside analysis filed in federal court on Saturday. The review of 20,930 names found 8,880 — about 42% — with no corresponding voter record, and identified at least 22 people on the list as United States citizens.
The filing, by the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights (CHIRLA) and researchers from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) Voting Rights Project, is the first independent check of a list the department has used to press California election officials to set aside ballots. Its findings sharpen a dispute that is now heading into the final days before the midterm elections, with both sides accusing the other of putting lawful votes at risk.
What happened
On Saturday, October 31, CHIRLA filed the analysis in federal court in Washington, D.C., as part of its lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security over the use of federal immigration data to challenge state voter rolls. Two UCLA data scientists, political scientist Matt Barreto and Michael Rios, carried out the comparison.
The list at the centre of the case contains 20,930 names that the Justice Department says it identified as likely noncitizens who had received mail ballots. The department asked California officials to treat those voters as possible illegal voters and to separate their ballots during the Election Day count. California refused, and the department sued.
Until now, the list itself had not been available for outside scrutiny. That changed on Friday, when Chief Judge James Boasberg ordered the government to hand it over to the plaintiffs’ lawyers. The administration had opposed sharing it, calling the request a fishing expedition and pointing to sensitive information in the material.
What the analysis found
The headline numbers are stark, and they deserve to be read precisely.
| Names checked | 20,930 (100%) |
| No match on California’s current voter file | 8,880 (about 42%) |
| Confirmed US citizens identified | at least 22 |
| Near-certain citizen matches | 66 more |
| Naturalised citizens highly likely misflagged | nearly 7,500 |
The researchers also reported that many more names may correspond to confirmed citizens, and warned that the government’s method appeared to misidentify thousands of citizens as ineligible. The filing was co-signed by Xavier Becerra, the Democratic candidate for California governor and an adviser to the UCLA Voting Rights Project.
It argued that demands made under criminal and civil threats endanger the voting rights of CHIRLA’s members and clients, and said the review showed, at least on the balance of the evidence, that those demands put eligible voters at risk.
What the numbers do — and do not — prove
A 42% no-match rate is not, on its own, a count of citizens wrongly flagged. The filing answers a narrower question: whether the federal names could be matched to California’s current voter file. It does not establish the citizenship or voting eligibility of every unmatched person, and the researchers themselves noted a practical obstacle — voter identification numbers had been removed from the list, making it harder to tell whether an entry was a registered voter, a duplicate, or simply an outdated record.
That distinction matters, and it is where the two sides now diverge most sharply. Supporters of the analysis say the sheer scale of the mismatch, combined with the confirmed citizens found on the list, undermines confidence in using it to separate ballots days before an election. The administration says the list was built to catch ineligible voting, and that an imperfect match rate does not prove the underlying concern is baseless.
California’s own earlier review points in the same direction as the new analysis: the state told a federal court that about one in four people on the list were born in the United States. That state finding and the UCLA analysis are separate checks, but they converge on the same problem — a list presented as a tool against noncitizen voting appears to contain large numbers of people who should never have been on it.
The administration’s response
The Justice Department pushed back hard on Saturday. Bill Essayli, head of the US Attorney’s office in Los Angeles, dismissed the findings as a bogus report produced by what he called an activist immigrant-rights group.
A department spokesperson, Kiersten V. Pels, defended the effort in broader terms, saying that every ballot cast by an ineligible voter cancels out the vote of an American citizen, and that the department makes no apology for protecting those votes.
President Donald Trump also weighed in on social media, criticising court rulings against the administration and claiming the department had uncovered 20,000, but potentially hundreds of thousands and maybe even millions, of fraudulent votes. That claim goes far beyond anything in the list itself, which contains 20,930 names, and it was not supported by the court filing.
The administration also appealed a separate ruling that barred it from sending further demands to California election officials, keeping the legal fight alive even as the list itself faces its first public test.
Background: how the California list dispute began
The Justice Department’s California ballot order grew out of its demand that counties set aside ballots from people on the federal list while citizenship was checked. State and local officials refused, arguing the list appeared riddled with errors and that the last-minute demands left too little time for the detailed checks required before anyone can be removed from the rolls.
Multiple judges have rejected the demand to separate the ballots. A federal appeals court refused the department’s emergency request to force California to set the disputed ballots aside while the underlying questions remain unresolved. That ruling did not decide the citizenship or voting status of the people named — it left the lower court’s denial of emergency relief in place.
The dispute sits within a wider midterm fight over election-fraud claims, including Trump’s $1 million reward for voter fraud tips leading to convictions, which has kept voter-roll accuracy at the centre of the campaign debate.
Why it matters
The practical stakes are immediate. Election Day counting in California will now proceed with the list publicly challenged, its accuracy questioned by the first researchers allowed to examine it, and its use as a basis for separating ballots rejected by multiple courts.
For voters, the risk described by the plaintiffs is exclusion by error: a lawful voter whose name appears on a flawed list could see their ballot pulled aside in a process designed for suspected noncitizens. For election officials, the risk runs the other way in the administration’s telling: failing to act on a federal warning could let ineligible votes stand.
For the courts, the case will test how far the federal government can go in using immigration data to challenge state rolls, and how much proof it must show before election workers face prosecution threats for refusing. The answers are unlikely to arrive before the votes are counted, which is why the Saturday filing matters now rather than after the election.
Timeline
- October 12: The federal government sends California its 20,930-name list and asks the state to sequester the corresponding ballots during the Election Day count. California refuses.
- October 15: The Justice Department sues after the state refuses to comply.
- October 24: The department presses counties to set aside ballots from suspected noncitizens, the demand covered in lhepen’s earlier reporting.
- October 30 (Friday): Chief Judge James Boasberg orders the government to disclose the list to CHIRLA’s lawyers.
- October 31 (Saturday): CHIRLA and UCLA researchers file the first outside analysis — 8,880 names unmatched, at least 22 citizens identified — and the administration appeals a separate ruling barring further demands.
- Next: The underlying lawsuit continues, with the ballot-separation demand already rejected by multiple courts and the accuracy of the list now publicly contested.
What happens next
Three things will decide how much this filing changes the election itself. First, whether any court revisits the ballot-separation demand in light of the new numbers. Second, whether California counties face any further federal pressure before counting begins. And third, whether the Justice Department produces a detailed methodological defence of the list, rather than a dismissal of the analysis, that would let its accuracy be judged on evidence rather than assertion.
None of those outcomes is settled. What is settled is that the list can no longer be described as unexamined: the first researchers to see it found that more than four in ten names do not match a voter record, and that citizens are on it.
FAQs
What is the DOJ’s California voter list?
It is a list of 20,930 names the Justice Department built from federal immigration data, which it says identifies likely noncitizen voters in California and asked the state to treat as possible illegal voters.
What did the new analysis find?
That 8,880 names, about 42%, match no one on California’s current voter file, and that at least 22 people on the list are confirmed US citizens, with 66 more near-certain citizen matches.
Does the analysis prove 8,880 citizens were wrongly flagged?
No. A no-match result does not by itself establish citizenship. It shows the list cannot be matched to the voter file for those names, which raises a serious accuracy question but does not settle each person’s status.
Why was the list only analysed now?
Because the administration resisted sharing it, calling the request a fishing expedition. Outsiders obtained it only after a federal judge ordered its disclosure on Friday.
Has any court ordered California to separate these ballots?
No. Multiple judges have rejected the demand, and an appeals court refused the department’s emergency request to force separation.
What happens to a flagged voter’s ballot now?
California has refused to separate ballots on the basis of the list, and courts have not ordered it to do so. The underlying lawsuit over the federal demands continues.
Related coverage: the Justice Department’s California ballot order, which first set out the demand to set aside ballots from suspected noncitizens, and the wider debate over voter-fraud claims in this midterm cycle, including Trump’s $1 million reward for voter fraud tips. More US election and courts coverage is in the US News section.