Data researchers at UCLA say at least 22 naturalized U.S. citizens fully match names on the Justice Department's list of about 21,000 California voters it calls likely noncitizens, according to a court filing made public on Saturday, October 31.
The analysis was filed by the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights, the Los Angeles immigrant rights group known as CHIRLA, in its federal lawsuit in Washington before Judge James Boasberg, Democracy Docket reported. Boasberg had ordered the government to turn the list over by 5 p.m. Friday, and CHIRLA indicated the department complied. The government has said it will appeal that order.
What the researchers did
Matt Barreto and Michael Rios of the UCLA Voting Rights Project compared the government's list of 20,930 names with a list of CHIRLA members who are confirmed naturalized citizens. Barreto described the approach as a scientific database matching method. Barreto reported "at least 22 entries on the CHIRLA citizen list that fully match to the DHS ineligible list." The team also counted 66 more "near certain full matches" and hundreds of matches it rated "highly likely."
The team checked the list against California's current voter file too. It found 8,880 names on the government's list that do not appear on the state's voter roll at all. Barreto wrote that the list's errors could produce "more than three hundred and fifty thousand potential false positive matches" of citizen voters if it were used to screen the rolls.
Our math on the list
By our arithmetic, 8,880 of 20,930 names is 42.4 percent. In plain terms, more than four in ten people on a list meant to identify noncitizens casting ballots in California are not current California registrants, according to the researchers.
The 22 full matches and 66 near certain matches add up to 88 people the researchers say are citizens. That number comes from comparing the list with the membership of a single organization, so it says nothing about how many citizens the full list might contain. It does show the list was not screened against naturalization records closely enough to exclude people who became citizens.
A separate check points the same way. The Los Angeles County clerk reviewed a sample of 7,035 people from the list and found that roughly one in four had given the United States as their place of birth, Democracy Docket reported. One in four of 7,035 is about 1,760 people in that sample alone, by our count.
These findings come from one side of contested litigation. The government has not yet answered them in court, and no judge has ruled on their accuracy.
Why the list matters now
The Justice Department has used the list to ask California to set aside the ballots of the people on it. Courts have refused at every step so far, most recently a 2 to 1 Ninth Circuit panel on October 30, which found no workable way to pull specific ballots out of the count, the Associated Press reported. California officials have said that once a mail ballot is processed it can no longer be matched to the voter who cast it.
The new filing shifts the argument from whether ballots can be separated to whether the list should be trusted at all. That question will matter for any appeal the department takes and for any prosecutions tied to the list after the November 3 election.
For our earlier coverage of the ballot fight, see Judge Carter Denies DOJ Bid to Set Aside 20,000 California Ballots, Says It Would "Wreak Havoc" and Appeals Court Tosses DOJ Bid on 20,000 California Ballots, and Judge Carter Tells Prosecutors to "Go Out and Indict". For the federal hunt for noncitizen voters in other states, read Judge Curbs DHS Hunt for Noncitizen Voters in Nine States Before Election Day.
Two Taps News stories summarize reporting and the analysis discussed on Two Taps and Friends. They are not legal advice. Read our standards.
