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The Justice Department is escalating its clash with California over voter-roll access, accusing state officials of blocking a federal audit — though Golden State officials warn the demand threatens voter privacy and oversteps federal authority.
The dispute centers on voter roll maintenance and access to registration records, not any publicly identified allegation of impropriety in a specific California race.
“If California genuinely wants voters to trust its elections, it should open its records, not fight to keep them closed,” Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Central District of California Bill Essayli said in a lengthy post on X that included a copy of a letter U.S. Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon, who leads the DOJ office enforcing federal voting-rights laws, sent to California Secretary of State Shirley Weber last year demanding the state’s voter rolls for inspection.
“What are they afraid of?” Essayli questioned.
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California’s rules allow certain first-time voters who do not provide a Social Security number or driver’s license when registering to verify their identity with documents including gym membership cards, employer IDs, credit or debit cards, prescription labels and insurance cards — a policy Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Central District of California Bill Essayli says warrants scrutiny. (Christina House / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images; Emily Elconin/REUTERS)
Dhillon’s letter followed an Aug. 8 response from Weber’s office raising concerns about privacy protections that could be implicated by the state voter-registration data sought by the federal government. A spokesperson from California Governor Gavin Newsom’s office told Digital that “every federal court to consider the issue has ruled U.S. DOJ’s demands violate federal law,” adding that “unlike this federal administration, we don’t do things that are illegal.”
Weber’s office offered to let DOJ inspect a redacted voter-registration database by appointment in Sacramento, arguing that satisfied their legal obligations, but Dhillon rejected that proposal and demanded an electronic copy of the statewide voter list “with all fields,” according to legal filings from the ongoing dispute taking place in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.
“We also have serious concerns about how California maintains its voter rolls,” Essayli wrote in his X post calling out California Democrats for blocking the federal audit of their voter rolls. “There are open questions about whether the state is promptly removing deceased voters, people who have moved, and individuals convicted of disqualifying felonies.”
Essayli also highlighted how California’s rules allow certain first-time voters who do not provide a Social Security number or driver’s license when registering to verify their identity with documents including gym membership cards, employer IDs, credit or debit cards, prescription labels and insurance cards — a policy his office says warrants scrutiny.
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“On top of that, California allows third parties to collect and turn in ballots on voters’ behalf (a practice known as ballot harvesting) with few restrictions,” Essayli added. “This makes it difficult to track who actually received, completed, and submitted each ballot.”
Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon, who leads the DOJ office that enforces federal voting-rights laws (Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)
The California Attorney General’s office pushed back on Essayli’s framing, noting that DOJ had already lost the case at the district court level and that the pending Ninth Circuit fight stems from the federal government’s appeal of that dismissal.
A U.S. District Judge dismissed the DOJ’s lawsuit in January, with the presiding judge writing that the department was seeking “an unprecedented amount of personal information” from California’s unredacted voter rolls, including names, Social Security numbers, home addresses, voting history and other sensitive information from nearly 23 million Californians. The judge also wrote that DOJ could not use federal election laws in a way that “wholly disregards the separation of powers provided for in the Constitution.”
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A spokesperson for Attorney General Rob Bonta’s office highlighted in a statement to Digital that the DOJ has brought approximately 30 voter roll lawsuits nationwide and has lost all eight voter roll cases that have been decided to date.
California Attorney general Rob Bonta (R) speaks as California Governor Gavin Newsom looks on during a news conference at Gemperle Orchard on April 16, 2025 in Ceres, California. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)
The fight for federal access to California’s voter rolls comes as voter roll maintenance has been a concern of President Donald Trump and Republicans nationally.
“If fraudsters do it right, it can be many, many more votes like this,” Illinois GOP Chairman Bob Grogan told Digital two weeks ago after a Democratic city official in his state turned herself in for allegedly using her dead mother’s name to vote. Grogan expressed particular concern with mail-in balloting, even though he did recognize its necessity in some cases.
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“Mail ballots are especially vulnerable, which is why they should be secured, should never be mailed without a specific request from the voter, and should always be verified before they are tabulated. This case also shows how essential it is to maintain clean voter rolls,” Jason Snead, who runs the Honest Elections Project, told Digital about the Illinois case. “Had the list maintenance process been slower, it is possible this illegal vote would have been counted before the fraud was discovered. Unfortunately, too many states — particularly blue states — actively resist commonsense safeguards, which begs the question: how many other illegal votes have slipped through the system?”
Chester County, Pa. election workers process mail-in and absentee ballots at West Chester University in West Chester on Nov. 4, 2020. (AP Photo/Matt Slocum)
Dead registrants have also fueled broader scrutiny of voter roll maintenance nationally.
North Carolina election officials said in April they identified roughly 34,000 deceased people still listed on the state’s voter rolls after a federal database comparison, while other recent local controversies have included allegations or investigations involving deceased voters appearing on registration lists or absentee-ballot records.
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Republicans have argued cases such as these show why states should be more transparent about how they maintain voter lists. RNC Chairman Joe Gruters told Digital that the New Jersey records were “eye-opening” and said the party has sought voter roll maintenance information from nearly every state.
DOJ has already pursued a similar records fight inside California, suing Orange County’s registrar last year for allegedly refusing to provide records to help remove noncitizens from its voter-registration list. At the time, Dhillon said removing noncitizens from California’s voter rolls was “critical” to ensuring the state’s rolls are accurate and that elections are conducted without fraudulent voting.
