'High percentage' of DOJ's California noncitizen voters list born in US, preliminary LA County analysis shows

The Justice Department's list of alleged noncitizens registered to vote in California includes a "high percentage" of individuals who say they were born in the U.S. and many more who have no voting history at all, according to an analysis of a relatively small sample conducted by officials in Los Angeles. 

In court papers filed Tuesday, two officials in the county registrar's office delivered the results of their "preliminary analysis" of 200 individuals from the DOJ's list of some 20,000 accused of being ineligible to vote.

Of those 200 individuals, officials said, nearly 40% "indicate that they were born in the United States, which is strong evidence of citizenship; and 71.2% of the records have no voting history."

More than 16 million votes were cast in California in 2024 and officials there say more than 23 million individuals are currently registered to vote in the state. 

During a press conference on Monday, Deputy Attorney General Trent McCotter attracted some scrutiny when he acknowledged that the administration's list likely included errors, and that "there may be some names on there who it turns out ultimately are citizens.

"We're not perfect and that's why we've asked California to cooperate with us," McCotter said. "These are the ones where we're kind of the most confident that they are noncitizens."

In a statement to ABC News, DOJ spokesperson Kiersten Pels accused California of "willful blindness." 

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"California cannot facilitate the violation of federal law," Pels said. "We notified California that noncitizens are likely registered to vote, and we asked the state to independently verify the citizenship of any ballots cast by people on a list that we provided. It refused to do so. Federal law doesn't permit this willful blindness." 

Monica Flores, an assistant registrar in the Los Angeles County Clerk's Office, wrote in her declaration on Tuesday that the Justice Department's proposed process for segregating ballots for these individuals "would risk disenfranchising voters who are validly registered." 

"The process the DOJ seeks to have the registrar undertake jeopardizes that core right for potentially thousands of voters, not to mention the finalization of election results, confidence in election results, and the ability to allow new elected officials to be instated in their positions," she continued.