Latest / GNN Daily Breaking News / US Justice Department threatens California over alleged noncitizen voters, letters show
Transcript
- 0:00Speaker 1: Federal law enforcement authorities escalated a high-stakes standoff with election
- 0:04Speaker 1: officials in the nation's most populous state, issuing formal administrative
- 0:09Speaker 1: demands for state election directors to review voter registration lists
- 0:14Speaker 1: for potential non-citizen inclusions. Official correspondence dispatched by senior Justice
- 0:20Speaker 1: Department leaders gave state election administrators 48 hours to audit
- 0:24Speaker 1: a federally compiled registry containing individuals identified by federal agencies
- 0:29Speaker 1: as suspected non-citizens who may have been issued mail-in ballots.
- 0:34Speaker 1: Federal prosecutors warned that failure to review the targeted entries,
- 0:38Speaker 1: withhold pending mail ballots, and segregate returned votes for citizenship
- 0:43Speaker 1: verification could trigger emergency legal intervention in federal court. The
- 0:48Speaker 1: sudden federal demand centers on an encrypted digital transmission delivered
- 0:52Speaker 1: to local election directors in Los Angeles County, detailing thousands
- 0:56Speaker 1: of voter profiles flagged by federal cross-referencing systems. Federal justice
- 1:02Speaker 1: officials asserted that allowing non-citizens to participate in federal elections
- 1:07Speaker 1: directly dilutes the lawful votes of citizens and violates federal
- 1:10Speaker 1: voting laws. However, federal correspondents acknowledged that the federal registry
- 1:16Speaker 1: contains suspected profiles requiring local verification, leaving state and county
- 1:22Speaker 1: election workers tasked with determining the precise legal status of
- 1:26Speaker 1: listed voters under extraordinarily tight procedural deadlines. State election officials
- 1:32Speaker 1: and voting rights advocates swiftly criticized the federal intervention as
- 1:36Speaker 1: an unprecedented attempt to disrupt active mail-in voting protocols weeks
- 1:41Speaker 1: before major national midterms. Legal representatives for state authorities noted
- 1:47Speaker 1: that federal authorities failed to detail the specific databases or
- 1:51Speaker 1: methodology used to generate the flag list. raising concerns that
- 1:56Speaker 1: eligible naturalized citizens could be mistakenly targeted or disenfranchised. Furthermore,
- 2:02Speaker 1: legal scholars pointed out that federal statutes restrict broad voter
- 2:06Speaker 1: role purges in the immediate weeks leading up to an election,
- 2:10Speaker 1: setting the stage for an immediate court confrontation over state sovereignty,
- 2:15Speaker 1: federal oversight, and election administration limits. The confrontation in California
- 2:21Speaker 1: reflects a broader nationwide strategy by federal law enforcement agencies
- 2:25Speaker 1: to scrutinize state voting rolls ahead of upcoming legislative contests.
- 2:30Speaker 1: Federal officials previously issued broad directives warning state secretaries across
- 2:35Speaker 1: the country of potential legal consequences if non-citizens remain on
- 2:40Speaker 1: voter rosters. As state legal teams prepare formal responses to
- 2:44Speaker 1: the Justice Department deadline, Election directors emphasize that existing verification
- 2:50Speaker 1: systems remain robust. Maintaining that public confidence in democratic institutions
- 2:55Speaker 1: depends on preventing last-minute political interference in local ballot processing.