The Justice Department gave election officials in all 58 California counties 48 hours to help verify the citizenship of people on federal lists and to segregate their mail ballots when eligibility could not be confirmed, an escalation that arrived 11 days before the Nov. 3 midterm election. Letters dated Oct. 23 warned that continuing to process ballots tied to suspected noncitizens could bring federal scrutiny or legal exposure, according to copies reviewed by Reuters and reporting by the Associated Press.

The demand places county registrars between a federal warning and California’s established election procedures while voting is already underway. Justice Department officials say they are seeking verification rather than a purge or cancellation of registrations. State and county officials say the government has not explained the matching method well enough to justify holding ballots, and early reviews have found apparent errors among the names supplied.

A statewide demand built from federal lists

The letters asked counties to provide registration records and identifying information, including Social Security number data where available, for people the federal government believes may be noncitizens. Reuters reported that the county totals included 1,754 people in Orange County, 1,355 in Riverside County, 1,133 in San Bernardino County, 334 in Ventura County, 180 in Santa Barbara County and 63 in San Luis Obispo County. Contra Costa County said its letter identified 407 people; Napa County’s letter listed 42, according to AP.

The requests flow from a list of more than 20,000 people that federal agencies matched against California voter records. In an Oct. 15 federal complaint, the government said U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and Homeland Security Investigations believed those people were registered and “likely noncitizens.” The complaint asks a federal court to stop California from counting their mail ballots until citizenship is verified. California has stressed that “likely” does not establish ineligibility and that the underlying method has not been disclosed.

The central dispute is data quality

California Secretary of State Shirley Weber’s office said federal officials had previously reduced a July allegation involving more than 190,000 registrations to roughly 20,000 names without providing the requested methodology. In an Oct. 15 response letter, Weber wrote that the data lacked enough detail for an investigative review and cited Nevada, where an earlier federal list failed to establish that any identified registrant was a noncitizen.

County checks reported in Saturday’s AP account reinforce the need for individual verification. Los Angeles County examined a sample of 200 names and found that more than 40% had canceled registrations, more than 70% had no voting history and nearly four in 10 were born in the United States. Mendocino County received names of people who were not county residents, according to a California court filing. Those findings do not prove that every name on the federal list is eligible, but they show why a database match alone cannot determine whether a ballot is lawful.

Prosecutions establish violations, not the scale of the list

The government has evidence of some unlawful conduct. On Oct. 19, the Justice Department charged 28 lawful permanent residents in California with election-related crimes, including allegedly false citizenship claims on registration or naturalization paperwork; many were also accused of voting illegally in earlier elections. Criminal complaints are allegations, and the defendants had not entered pleas when the cases were announced.

Those cases support investigating specific suspected violations. They do not independently validate all 20,000 matches or establish widespread voting by noncitizens. The federal statute at the center of the dispute makes noncitizen voting in federal elections a crime, but the practical question for county officials is whether the government’s list accurately identifies the people covered by that prohibition before lawful ballots are separated from the count.

The letters also landed days after a federal judge examined a related Homeland Security effort in nine states. In an Oct. 21 court order, U.S. District Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín found that the government’s source data included tens of millions of records of questionable provenance and that reviewers sometimes had no more than 12 minutes to clear a person from a target list. The order noted that no comprehensive federal database contains the citizenship status of every U.S. resident.

That ruling concerned field investigations and alleged voter intimidation, not the separate Justice Department lawsuit seeking to segregate California ballots. The distinction matters: the order did not decide whether the 20,000 California names are citizens or noncitizens, nor did it forbid legitimate investigations of unlawful voting. It did, however, document how incomplete or outdated records can sweep citizens into an enforcement system, the same operational risk county registrars say they face.

Courts now face a compressed election timetable

California officials say they will continue administering the election under state and federal law while seeking judicial guidance. The Justice Department has asked the Ninth Circuit to intervene before the trial judge rules on its emergency request, an unusual procedural move that Reuters reported followed the lower court’s decision to schedule a later hearing. The appeals court is expected to hear arguments as counties continue processing returned ballots.

The immediate issue is therefore narrower than the national political claims surrounding noncitizen voting. Federal law bars unlawful ballots, while election administrators also must avoid withholding lawful votes on the basis of inaccurate matches. The next rulings will determine whether California counties must adopt the federal segregation process before Election Day and what evidence the government must provide to justify removing a ballot from the ordinary count.