'This is not normal': Feds demand California counties set aside likely noncitizen ballots

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Set us as preferred The U.S.Justice Department expanded its efforts to intervene in California’s ongoing election Friday, sending letters to county elections offices statewide with demands that they segregate ballots from voters the Trump administration believes are noncitizens.The letters — which give officials 48 hours to act and threaten them with criminal punishments if they refuse — follow similar correspondence the Justice Department sent last week to California Secretary of State Shirley Weber and Dean Logan, head of the L.A.

County registrar’s office, calling for some 20,000 ballots statewide be set aside and left uncounted until state and local officials can prove that the voters are citizens.When Weber and Logan balked, the Justice Department promptly sued them and the state in a case currently pending in federal court.The California officials have contended the Justice Department’s efforts are illegal.

Politics The lawsuit accuses Trump and his administration of using “shoddily compiled lists of supposed noncitizens” and “coercive threats” against state officials to assert federal control over the midterms.The new letters, first reported by the San Francisco Chronicle, follow previous threats from Justice Department officials and President Trump warning that local California election officials could face criminal prosecution for being “aiders and abettors to a federal crime” if they tabulate votes from the “likely noncitizens” the administration has flagged.A spokesman for the U.S.

attorney’s office in Los Angeles said 57 of California’s 58 counties were served the letters, with the exception of Los Angeles, which had already received a notice.“The letters speak for themselves.Any election official who knowingly processes the ballot of a noncitizen is opening themselves to legal...