Their review found that 42% of the names supplied to California election officials do not match the state’s current voter rolls.
By The Haitian Tribune Staff
WASHINGTON — A review of a federal list of possible noncitizen voters in California found that more than 4 in 10 names do not appear in the state’s current voter records, according to a court filing by an immigrant-rights organization.
Researchers with the University of California, Los Angeles, examined 20,930 names the U.S. Justice Department had asked California officials to treat as potential ineligible voters. Their analysis found that 8,880 names—about 42% of the list—could not be matched to anyone in the state’s voter file.
The researchers also identified at least 22 people on the list who are U.S. citizens. They said thousands of naturalized citizens may have been incorrectly flagged as well.
The findings were submitted by the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights, known as CHIRLA, and UCLA’s Voting Rights Project, which are challenging the federal government’s use of immigration records to review voter registrations. The filing was signed by two UCLA data analysts and cosigned by Xavier Becerra, a Democratic candidate for California governor and an adviser to the project.
The federal list became available to the plaintiffs after a judge ordered the Trump administration to provide it. The Justice Department had asked California election officials to separate ballots associated with the flagged names during Election Day vote counting. Several judges have rejected the request, while state and local officials have raised concerns about the list’s accuracy and the short time available to investigate names before an election.
Using the government’s method, the UCLA researchers estimated that nearly 7,500 naturalized citizens in California were highly likely to have been wrongly identified as ineligible. The filing also said the Justice Department’s version of the list omitted voter identification numbers, which the researchers described as important for determining whether a person is registered or appears more than once.
CHIRLA and the UCLA project filed suit in October seeking to block the Department of Homeland Security from using federal immigration data to challenge state voter rolls. The plaintiffs argue that errors in the data and matching process could prevent eligible citizens from voting and may particularly affect naturalized citizens.
On Friday, a federal judge in California ordered the Justice Department to stop sending demands to state officials. The administration appealed the ruling the following day. Some California counties had conducted preliminary checks of the list and reported finding errors.
The Justice Department defended its effort, saying ballots cast by ineligible voters could dilute the votes of citizens. Department spokesperson Kiersten V. Pels said the agency’s goal was to protect eligible voters.
By the Haitian Tribune Newsroom
