Justice Dept. sues California, asks court to force state to stop counting 20,000 ballots

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Set us as preferred The Trump administration on Thursday sued California over its handling of voter fraud claims, asking a federal court to immediately bar the state from counting ballots from about 20,000 voters statewide — many in Los Angeles County — whom the administration alleges are “likely noncitizens.”The lawsuit is highly unusual, particularly given that California voters have already begun voting in the Nov.3 midterms via mail ballots, experts said.It’s also highly inappropriate and based on questionable federal data that have proved wildly inaccurate in other states, state officials said.“This is a sad, desperate attempt by Trump to use his politicized Justice Department to try to suppress California voters just three weeks before Election Day,” Gov.

Gavin Newsom wrote on X.“Courts have made clear the federal government has no role in running state elections.

We will defend free and fair elections in the Golden State and call out every authoritarian attempt to undermine our democracy.”U.S.Atty.

Gen.Todd Blanche, in his own statement, defended the lawsuit.“State-facilitated voter fraud is unacceptable in the United States of America,” he said.

“If found responsible in a court of law, the State of California will have seriously undermined confidence in our electoral system and violated laws that protect our nation’s representative system of government.”The lawsuit states that “as part of an investigation into unlawful voting,” U.S.Citizenship and Immigration Services conducted a “multiagency and multilevel review” of state voter and federal citizenship data and determined with “high confidence” that around 20,000 “likely noncitizens” are registered to vote in the state.It then forwarded those names to Homeland Security Investigations, which conducted its own investigatio...