DOJ's California Voter-Roll Campaign: 28 Charges, an Admission Citizens May Be on the List, and a Registrar's Filing That 38.9% of a Sample Were Born in the U.S.

DOJ's California Voter-Roll Campaign: 28 Charges, an Admission Citizens May Be on the List, and a Registrar's Filing That 38.9% of a Sample Were Born in the U.S.

UPDATE (Oct. 20, 2026): The day after DOJ sued to stop California from counting ballots of ~20,000 alleged noncitizen registrants and charged 28 people, the government's own numbers and statements undercut the premise of the disenfranchisement-by-litigation bid.

The trajectory of the claim, per the governor's office: this summer, DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin told California officials there may be as many as 190,000 "illegal" voters on the rolls — "no evidence or sources were provided despite California officials asking." Last week, DOJ sent a USB flash drive to the LA County Registrar (not the Secretary of State) with "supposedly 20,000 names of 'likely illegal' voters" — far below 190,000. On Monday, DOJ "announced charges against 28 people, far fewer than the revised 20,000 claimed the week prior."

And at the press conference, per the governor's office: "some shocking admissions were made by Trump DOJ officials: that there may be U.S. citizens mistakenly on their list of 20,000 of suspected 'illegal' voters.¹"

Two more data points landed the same day. LA Material reported there were more registered Republicans than Democrats in the batch of 28 charged. And "according to a new filing by the Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk, 38.9% of a batch of 200 names sampled from the 20,000 Trump's DOJ shared indicated they were born in the United States."

The expert reception was scathing. UCLA's Rick Hasen: "If [the] DOJ could prove many more cases, we would have heard about it." David Becker (former DOJ attorney): the 28 prosecutions represent "just 0.0001% of active voters in California." The LA Times' Anita Chabria: "All told about 1 in 1.25 million registered voters being accused of illegally registering or voting, making this crime slightly less likely than guessing a six-digit pin code on the first try."

What it means: The underlying C.D. Cal. suit to block counting ballots of the ~20,000 named registrants — filed Oct. 15 on a Supremacy Clause preemption theory, with ballots mailing since Oct. 5 and experts across the spectrum calling it a guaranteed loss — remains pending, and the watch for a ruling stays open. But the evidentiary floor under the request is collapsing in public: a 190,000-to-20,000-to-28 collapse, an admission that U.S. citizens are on the list, and a registrar's sample in which nearly 4 in 10 sampled names were U.S.-born. The pattern signals election-eve litigation aimed at casting doubt on a state's count rather than at stopping fraud.²