Northern California election officials are refusing to comply with U.S. Department of Justice requests to provide private voter information and potentially set aside ballots from people the agency suspects are not U.S. citizens.
The agency gave local election officials 48 hours to determine who on DOJ-provided lists was a citizen.
“I write to make unmistakably clear the legal implication of continuing to send vote-by-mail ballots to those people on the list or tabulating ballots cast by them until citizenship can be verified,” according to a DOJ letter to Humboldt County.
Humboldt County Registrar of Voters Juan Cervantes said his office received the letter by mail and through hand delivery by representatives of the U.S. attorney's office.
“Despite the extraordinary effort that they put into delivering it, considerably less effort appears to have gone into verifying any of the information they gave me,” Cervantes said.
He said the document includes a list of 16 names with dates of birth and registration addresses, but no evidence that the individuals were not citizens.
Cervantes checked the names against county voter records and found that several weren't registered in Humboldt County. He said he does not plan to provide the DOJ with additional information or set aside ballots from people on the list.
“I swore to follow the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of the State of California,” he said. “I'd be violating that oath by doing what they're asking of me.”
Cervantes said he hasn’t heard from the federal agency since missing the deadline.
“They were kind enough to stop by some of our local downtown areas and give us some tourist dollars since they made the drive all the way up here,” he said. “But since then, we haven't had any communication with them.”
The county letters follow a DOJ lawsuit filed against California this month, asking a judge to prevent the state from counting ballots from a list of more than 20,0000 suspected noncitizens. A federal court rejected that request on Wednesday. The administration is expected to appeal.
Tehama County officials have also not complied with the DOJ request.
“The list itself did not provide sufficient information to determine citizenship, and some of the data fields were incomplete or cut off,” the county said in a statement. “Further, the letter was not accompanied by a subpoena, a search warrant or other court order directing and allowing for the release of information.”
County officials said removing any voters on the provided list would expose the local government to lawsuits. They said they would continue investigating credible allegations of voter fraud and referring cases to the district attorney.
Mendocino County Clerk Katrina Bartolomie told the New York Times that the list her office received did not include voters in her county.
