Federal authorities have charged 28 people from across California with illegally registering to vote or casting ballots in federal elections despite not being U.S. citizens \u2014 escalating an election battle between the state and the Trump administration just weeks before the Nov. 3 midterms.<\/p>\n
Authorities said 11 of the 28 were arrested as of Monday and that the 17 others \u201cwill be in custody in the near future.\u201d Some of the 28, all of whom are lawful permanent residents of the U.S., are also charged with lying on their naturalization paperwork, officials said.<\/p>\n
Acting Deputy Atty. Gen. Trent McCotter cast the arrests during a Monday news conference as proof that California voter rolls are corrupted and need to be purged to prevent noncitizens from negating the legitimate votes of U.S. citizens, and that California officials who have rebuffed recent Trump administration efforts to purge the state\u2019s rolls are willfully obstructing justice.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis Department of Justice will not look the other way while non-citizens vote in federal elections,\u201d McCotter said. \u201cUnfortunately, the same can\u2019t be said for California and L.A. County.\u201d<\/p>\n
Federal authorities said 21 of the 28 individuals charged are suspected of actually voting, some in multiple elections.<\/p>\n
State and county officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the prosecutions, which federal authorities dubbed \u201cOperation Protect the Vote.\u201d<\/p>\n
However, California officials have consistently said that the state has robust laws for preventing ineligible voters from casting ballots, and that there is no evidence that such voting is widespread. They and independent elections experts acknowledge fraud occurs, but say it is rare \u2014 and that launching a sweeping effort to purge voter rolls as California voters are already in the process of casting mail ballots violates federal law and threatens to disenfranchise legitimate voters.<\/p>\n
The California charges follow dozens of others announced across the country in recent weeks, as the Trump administration has ratcheted up its efforts to identify ineligible voters and trumpet their arrests as proof that President Trump\u2019s long-held claims of election insecurity in the country are valid.<\/p>\n
McCotter said in the last seven weeks, the Trump administration has charged 113 people across 20 different states with voting-related crimes. He said the Biden administration had only charged 13 people with such crimes in four years.<\/p>\n
There are more than 23 million registered voters in California, and more than 154 million people voted nationally in the 2024 presidential election.<\/p>\n
The new charges come amid a broader legal battle between the Justice Department and local and state elections officials over alleged voter fraud by noncitizens in California, a conflict that has intensified in recent days. <\/p>\n