UCLA Study Finds Major Errors in Trump Administration's California Voter List
A legal filing shows more than 40 percent of people flagged by the federal government as potential non-citizen voters are not on California voter rolls.
At a glance
- A UCLA analysis found 42 percent of names on a federal list of suspected non-citizen voters were not registered in California.
- The Trump administration sought to sequester ballots for nearly 21,000 flagged individuals ahead of midterm elections.
- The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals previously rejected the federal lawsuit as an unconstitutional overreach.
A statistical analysis submitted in federal court on Saturday revealed significant inaccuracies in a list of purported non-citizen voters sent to California by the administration of President Donald Trump. Conducted by researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles, the review found that more than four in 10 individuals flagged by the federal government were not registered to vote in the state at all.
The findings were submitted by the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights (CHIRLA) as part of an ongoing legal challenge just days before Tuesday's midterm elections. The Trump administration had claimed in early October that up to 20,930 "likely non-citizens" appeared on California's voter rolls. Based on those claims, the administration filed a lawsuit on October 15 seeking an order for the state to sequester ballots sent to those individuals to prevent them from being counted.
According to the analysis by two data scientists with the UCLA Voting Rights Project, 8,880 of the names provided by the federal government—roughly 42 percent—did not appear anywhere in California's active voter files. Furthermore, the researchers noted that thousands of other individuals on the list were either confirmed United States citizens or likely eligible to vote, raising fears that legitimate voters could be disenfranchised.
The Trump administration has repeatedly alleged widespread voting irregularities in California, the nation's most populous state, and has threatened local election officials with prosecution. However, courts have repeatedly rebuffed the administration's legal interventions. On Friday, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco rejected the federal complaint for a second time, ruling that it violated the Elections Clause of the US Constitution, which assigns election administration to individual states.
Similar discrepancies have emerged in other states that received federal voter lists. In Nevada, state officials discovered that none of the individuals flagged by the Trump administration were non-citizens. Voting rights advocates argue that using flawed government data threatens legal voters, a concern echoed in Saturday's filing, which was co-signed by Xavier Becerra, the Democratic candidate running for California governor.
Source: Al Jazeera.
Questions and answers
- What did the UCLA analysis reveal about the Trump administration's voter list?
- Researchers found that 8,880 of the 20,930 flagged names were not registered voters in California, and thousands more were eligible US citizens.
- What is the Trump administration seeking in its California lawsuit?
- The administration asked the court to require California to sequester ballots sent to individuals on the list to keep them from being tallied.
- How have courts ruled on the federal government's claims?
- The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals dismissed the lawsuit twice, ruling that the federal government's actions violated the US Constitution's Elections Clause.
