New Jersey Is One of Five States Sent Federal Noncitizen Voter Lists Ahead of Tuesday's Midterms, Reuters Reports
The Trump administration has told election officials in New Jersey and four other states that it identified noncitizens on their voter rolls, Reuters reported Sunday — lists that legal experts say could be used to challenge close results after Tuesday's vote.
New Jersey is one of five states whose election officials have received letters from the Trump administration saying the federal government identified noncitizens on their voter rolls, according to a Justice Department document seen by Reuters and reported Sunday. The other states named were California, Washington, Pennsylvania and Nevada, and the letters had been sent as of Oct. 30, Reuters reported.
In California, an Oct. 13 Justice Department letter demanded that the state not count ballots from about 20,000 registered voters who federal agencies said they reasonably believe are likely noncitizens without first verifying their citizenship, Reuters reported. State officials rebuffed requests to set aside ballots from people on the lists, which have not been made public, and the Justice Department is now suing California to block the state from counting ballots from the voters on its list. California says its safeguards against noncitizen voting are robust, according to Reuters.
Noncitizen voting is illegal and can lead to jail time, fines and deportation. The White House says it is a significant problem requiring aggressive enforcement, Reuters reported, but a Reuters investigation in July found just 129 cases in which noncitizens were federally charged with voting illegally since Congress created the federal voting-by-aliens statute in 1996, many of them apparently stemming from confusion or administrative errors rather than intentional fraud.
On Oct. 28, a federal judge in California rejected the Justice Department's bid to block ballots from the 20,000 voters, saying the move would wreak havoc on the Nov. 3 elections and questioning the reliability of the list, and a federal appeals court upheld that ruling on Oct. 30, citing a material risk of disenfranchising eligible voters, Reuters reported. Legal experts told Reuters the lists could still provide a basis for challenging close election results, even if the administration struggles to prevail in court. New Jersey voters go to the polls Tuesday, Nov. 3, from 6 a.m. to 8 p.m., with early in-person voting ending Sunday.
