LA County: High Share of DOJ Noncitizen Voter List Born in United States

Los Angeles County's finding that a substantial portion of flagged registrants claim U.S. Birth raises procedural questions about the federal list's construction and the verification steps that...

Los Angeles County officials have determined that a high percentage of individuals on the Department of Justice's list of alleged noncitizen voters in California reported being born in the United States, according to an ABC News report published ahead of the county's formal analysis being released publicly.

The county's finding goes directly to the reliability of the federal list. If a significant share of flagged registrants were born in the United States, they are birthright citizens under the Fourteenth Amendment and would not be subject to the noncitizen voter prohibitions the DOJ is seeking to enforce under federal election law.

The DOJ has not publicly released the methodology it used to construct the California list, including which federal databases were cross-referenced, which error rate was considered acceptable, and whether any pre-release verification was conducted with state or county election officials. Those details, if they exist in written form, would likely appear in internal agency records or court filings associated with any enforcement action.

The list is part of a broader federal effort to identify and prosecute noncitizen voting. The Congressional Times previously reported that the DOJ charged 28 individuals with noncitizen voting in federal elections, a separate action that involved named defendants and specific case records.

Federal voter rolls in California are maintained primarily at the county level, with the Secretary of State overseeing coordination. When residents register to vote in California, they attest under penalty of perjury that they are U.S. Citizens. The state does not currently require documentary proof of citizenship at registration, a policy that has been the subject of ongoing federal legislative debate.

The National Voter Registration Act of 1993 sets baseline requirements for voter roll maintenance and limits the circumstances under which states may remove registrants from rolls close to an election. Any federal effort to remove voters identified on the DOJ list would need to account for those statutory timelines and procedural requirements.

LA County's analysis was conducted after the county received the federal list and began cross-referencing it against its own registration and identification records. The county has not yet released a precise figure for the percentage of flagged individuals it identified as U.S.-born, according to the ABC News report. What document would produce that number is a formal county election department report or response letter to the DOJ, which would be a public record under California's Public Records Act.

The DOJ has not commented on the county's findings, according to available reporting as of October 21, 2026. It is not known whether the department reviewed the list against Social Security Administration birth records, U.S. Passport databases, or state vital statistics before transmitting it to California officials.

For context, similar list-matching efforts conducted in other states in prior years have produced error rates that varied depending on the databases used and the matching criteria applied. A 2012 effort in Florida to identify noncitizen voters using state driver's license records was later found to have flagged thousands of U.S. Citizens, according to reporting by the Miami Herald at the time. That outcome resulted in the state withdrawing the majority of its initial list after local supervisors of elections conducted their own reviews.

Several questions remain unanswered by public records currently available. The specific databases the DOJ used to generate the California list, the total number of individuals on it, the matching algorithm or criteria applied, and whether any registrants have been formally notified or removed from rolls are not confirmed in any public filing or court document reviewed for this report. A formal DOJ response to LA County, or any court filing in a related enforcement action, would be the most direct source for those answers.