Los Angeles’ top federal prosecutor fears noncitizens could be illegally casting ballots in California as dozens of polling places opened across LA County Saturday, warning the state could be trying to run out the clock before disputed votes are counted.
First Assistant US Attorney Bill Essayli told The California Post it’s “very highly likely” noncitizens have already voted, as the Justice Department fights to have California set aside ballots tied to more than 20,000 suspected noncitizens.
“If you look at California’s own papers, they said they’ve already processed over 300,000 ballots just for LA County. So this is going on as we speak,” Essayli said, warning that more disputed ballots could be cast as the lawsuit plays out in court.
Essayli and US Attorney General Todd Blanche are leading the Justice Department’s push for the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals to force California to set aside the disputed ballots and verify voters’ citizenship before counting them.
The battle centers on a list of more than 20,000 people that California Secretary of State Shirley Weber and Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder Dean Logan did not review within the department’s requested timeframe.
As the federal and state officials battle in court, with oral arguments set for Sunday, Essayli worried that California’s continued efforts to fight the DOJ’s order will lead to untold illegal votes being tallied.
“Our biggest fear is they’re just going to try to run out the clock until all the ballots have been processed, in which case there will be nothing we’ll be able to do after the election,” Essayli said, citing recent state election results with razor-thin margins. “Once they count the ballots, there’s no way to go back and undo that.”
On Saturday, early in-person voting for the Nov. 3 election began at 123 vote centers across LA County, with hundreds of additional locations scheduled to open next weekend.
“When you vote in person, it’s even more concerning because that ballot is processed instantly,” Essayli noted of potential noncitizen ballots being cast.
Only days earlier, federal agents arrested 28 alleged illegal voters in a sprawling operation that netted targets across California, drawn from the list of 20,000 suspected noncitizens.
They were charged with fraudulently registering to vote in US elections, in which most of them allegedly cast illegal ballots. Authorities called it the biggest such takedown in the state’s history.
“All of them were registered to vote and some of them voted in multiple elections. So this is not a theory,” Essayli said.
The prosecutor wondered why any state leaders would fight the Justice Department’s efforts, saying opponents have dismissed claims of any illegal voters as representing only a “small percentage” of scofflaws.
“So what percentage is acceptable? I’d like to know from California,” Essayli said.
Before launching its lawsuit, the Justice Department supplied LA County with a password-protected thumb drive identifying the suspected noncitizens who were sent mail-in ballots, according to letters sent last week to Weber and Dean Logan.
Logan said at the time that he didn’t consider the drive a secure device and hadn’t accessed any files.
“What are they afraid of? Why are they refusing to work with us to figure this out?” Essayli said. “If they’re so confident that their records are so good and noncitizens aren’t voting, then they should have nothing to worry about.”
