A legal analysis found that more than 40% of names on a Department of Justice list of alleged noncitizen voters in California do not appear on the state's voter rolls, according to a Saturday filing by an immigrant-rights group.
Two data analysts at UCLA's Voting Rights Project examined 20,930 names that the DOJ demanded California election officials treat as possible illegal voters by separating their ballots on Election Day. The analysis found that 8,880 names, representing 42% of the list, do not correspond to anyone in California's current voter file. The research also identified at least 22 U.S. citizens on the list, with many more potentially flagged incorrectly.
The Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights, or CHIRLA, filed the analysis alongside the UCLA researchers. Xavier Becerra, the Democratic candidate for California governor and an adviser to the UCLA Voting Rights Project, cosigned the filing. "The expert analysis further makes clear that the mandated voter list endangers a significant number of eligible California voter," the filing stated.
Bill Essayli, who runs the U.S. Attorney's office in Los Angeles, disputed the analysis on social media. "This is a bogus report by the activist illegal immigrant rights group CHIRLA," Essayli posted on X.
Multiple federal judges have rejected the DOJ demand as unconstitutional. On Friday, a federal judge in California ordered the Justice Department to stop sending demands to state officials. The Trump administration appealed that decision Saturday.
The DOJ also urged Washington state to remove what it said were 400 possible noncitizens from its voter rolls, though state election officials there said that list is also unreliable.