Judge mulls independent review of CA voter list

Voters in California may face a procedural delay as a federal judge considers appointing an independent expert to audit a government list of alleged noncitizen voters. U.S. District Judge David O. Carter stated on Tuesday that he is weighing the use of a special master to evaluate claims by the Trump administration that approximately 20,000 people on the state's voter rolls are not U.S. citizens.

The move comes in a lawsuit filed by the Justice Department in mid-October. The federal government is seeking to prevent California from counting ballots from those individuals. Carter indicated that an independent review could be completed before the state’s December 11 deadline to certify election results. He noted that deciding without such a review would be too rushed given the substance of both sides' claims.

The 20,000 names on the federal list represent a small fraction of California's 23 million registered voters. The dispute centers on whether counties can physically separate ballots from ineligible voters before certification. California officials argue that this is logistically impossible because returned mail ballots are separated from their identification envelopes. More than 3 million ballots have already been returned in the midterm election, which concludes next Tuesday.

Carter expressed skepticism regarding the federal government's strategy. He questioned why the administration sued California instead of using criminal prosecutions to address alleged noncitizen voting. He pointed to the recent arrest of 28 people across the state in October who were accused of illegally registering. "You got a remedy for goodness sakes, go out and indict," Carter said from the bench.

The judge also addressed the potential criminal prosecution of local county clerks who fail to follow federal demands. Carter warned that threats to state and county election employees should cease immediately. He left the courtroom abruptly after issuing that statement.

First Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli argued that the government seeks to stop illegal voting rather than chase it later. He stated that the case depends on the credibility of the flagged names. "We have not asked to void any ballots," Essayli said, describing the government's goal as an effort to safeguard the election.

Lawyers for California and Los Angeles County challenged the reliability of the federal list. They noted that the government did not specify how it obtained the voter file or how it used a private third-party service to verify Social Security numbers. M. Patrick Moore, a lawyer for the Los Angeles County registrar's office, said the county would cooperate with criminal prosecutions if the federal government preferred that route.

A federal agent's affidavit claimed that 800 employees manually checked each name on the list. The filing conceded that some citizens might be on the list by mistake. Los Angeles County officials reported that a small sample of the names included citizens, contradicting the agent's assertion that the county's findings were false.