Follow-Up: California Voter-List Fight Escalates: LA County Sample of 200 Finds Over Half Cancelled or Inactive; Ninth Circuit Hears Case Sunday Afternoon
California's dispute with the U.S. Justice Department over a federal list of roughly 20,000 suspected noncitizen registrants entered a new phase on October 25. A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit was set to hear remote oral arguments at 1 p.m. Pacific time on Sunday on the Justice Department's bid to have California set aside the ballots in question. Mail voting is already under way, and state officials said in court filings that more than 330,000 mail ballots have been counted statewide.
The most concrete check so far comes from Los Angeles County. County officials sampled 200 names from the statewide list, and according to their court filing, 112 of them had registrations that were cancelled or inactive, 71.2 percent had no voting history, and among those whose birthplace was meaningfully reported, 38.9 percent were born in the United States. The county said the review is preliminary and quality control is continuing, but that it shows the federal list is unreliable.
The Justice Department argues that election officials must not knowingly count ballots cast by ineligible voters, and that its demands protect election integrity. On October 23, the office of First Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli sent letters to at least 18 California counties requiring them to provide, within 48 hours, the Social Security numbers, identification details and registration records of suspected voters, and to set aside ballots whose voters' citizenship cannot be verified; the letter to San Bernardino County said the federal list includes 1,133 people in that county. California's secretary of state and the Los Angeles County registrar oppose the demands, saying the federal data is unreliable and could delay certification and disenfranchise citizens. Earlier this week, federal prosecutors charged 28 people with illegally registering to vote; those charges must still be proved in court and do not establish that the full list is accurate.
The Sunday panel consists of Judges Mark Bennett, Patrick Bumatay and Gabriel Sanchez. California has said that if the panel orders ballots set aside, it will seek en banc review; a Tuesday hearing before U.S. District Judge David O. Carter remains on the calendar. The hearing concerns the order of ballot review and counting, not any final determination of individual voters' eligibility.
Source: GSM·USA
Source: GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)
Photo: 洛杉矶县行政大楼 Kenneth Hahn Hall of Administration，洛杉矶县选民登记处总部所在地。图片：Visitor7，CC BY-SA 3.0 — via Wikimedia Commons
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