Justice Department Gives California 48 Hours to Check a List of 'Likely Noncitizen' Mail Voters. Bay Area Counties Say Nothing Changes for Now

The U.S. Department of Justice has given California election officials 48 hours to review a list of people the federal government "believes are likely noncitizens" who were mailed ballots for the Nov. 3 general election, and to set those ballots aside if their citizenship can't be confirmed. California Secretary of State Shirley Weber and Attorney General Rob Bonta rejected the demand on Wednesday, Oct. 14, and several Bay Area counties said vote-by-mail is going ahead as normal.

What the Justice Department wants

In letters sent Tuesday, Oct. 13, to Weber and Los Angeles County Registrar Dean Logan, acting U.S. Deputy Attorney General Trent McCotter said the department had given Logan's office a password-protected thumb drive with names of people it believes are likely noncitizens who were sent a vote-by-mail ballot. The letters asked officials to review the list within 48 hours.

"For individuals whom you cannot independently confirm citizenship status, we request that you immediately instruct the appropriate elections officials to segregate — not cancel — those individuals' vote-by-mail ballots until their citizenship status can be determined," McCotter wrote, according to KQED. If the state can't put that process in place, he wrote, "the United States will have no choice but to seek emergency relief."

How California responded

Weber's office said it received the demand but that the Justice Department did not give the list to the state, only to Los Angeles County, where the registrar confirmed it arrived on a protected thumb drive "with the password indicated on a sticky note." Logan said his office did not try to open the drive because it didn't meet the registrar's security standards, KQED reported.

The Secretary of State's office said that when the administration claimed in July that California had 190,000 noncitizens on its rolls, the state asked for the methodology and data sources behind the claim and was given nothing. "The USDOJ's relentless efforts to unlawfully gain access to states' protected voter data and purge voter rolls serve only to cause chaos and fuel public distrust in our elections," Weber said, adding that state law already requires that only U.S. citizens can register.

Bonta, speaking at a press conference Wednesday, said the administration has "zero credibility" on the issue and accused it of trying to intimidate voters while Californians are already filling out ballots.

What it means for Bay Area voters

Most California counties started mailing ballots last week. According to KQED, election officials in Marin, Sonoma, Contra Costa and Solano counties said they had not received any demand from the federal government. "Unless we hear otherwise from the California Secretary of State, there will be no changes to Vote-by-Mail procedures in Sonoma County for the Nov. 3, 2026, General Election," Wendy Hudson, Sonoma County's deputy chief registrar of voters, said. She added that registration data is cross-checked with other state and federal agencies, and that an application without a citizenship confirmation isn't processed.

For now, state and county officials have announced no change to how Bay Area voters fill out and return their mail ballots for Nov. 3. Read our guide to voting early by mail in Santa Clara County, and find every local measure and race on our Bay Area Election 2026 hub.