The Department of Justice (DOJ) on Sunday defended the accuracy of its claim that more than 20,000 “likely noncitizens” are on California’s voter rolls, even after an outside analysis found that more than 40 percent of the names flagged as noncitizens were not on the state’s voter rolls. DOJ officials wrote in a filing that...
Page B51From§Eachthe evening edition — 2 November 2026
THE SHRINKING NUMBER
DOJ cuts noncitizen-voter claim by 170,000, loses in court three times, asks for sanctions on the analysts.
As it ran on the front
The Justice Department said, in recent months, that 190,000 people on California's voter rolls were not citizens. It was not settled. It was a draft.
The department revised it. The 190,000 became 20,000 — an eighty-nine percent cut — and the department filed an emergency lawsuit to make the smaller number stick, after early voting had already begun. The suit asked California to set aside ballots from those 20,000 named voters until someone could verify their citizenship. The verifying was supposed to happen after the lawsuit, not before it.…
…(cont) California's governor called the suit "an assault on democracy."
Two days later, on October 29, a federal judge named David Carter, nominated to the bench by Bill Clinton, declined the same request at the district level. Judge Carter called it legally thin and said it appeared designed to cast doubt on an election that had not happened yet.
Three days after the first appellate ruling, on October 30, a second panel of the Ninth Circuit also split 2 to 1, and also rejected the request, finding no new reason to like the number. That ruling opened a path to the Supreme Court, where the department went next.
All together now, line by line: the number started at 190,000. It became 20,000. The department's answer, filed Sunday, was not a correction. It was a request for sanctions against the analysts who did the subtraction.
The department maintains the 20,000 figure is accurate. Three courts have looked at it over four days — a district judge and two appellate panels — and three times the answer has been no. Whatever the Supreme Court does with the filing now in front of it, it will do it with one day left before California's polls close for good.
“They cut their own number by almost ninety percent, got told no three separate times by three separate judges, and the response wasn't to drop it — it was to go after the people who checked the math. That's not a fraud case, that's a pressure campaign with a docket number, timed to land the day before people stop voting. You don't sue over a number you believe in. You sue over a number you need to still be in the news tomorrow.”
“Look, the department isn't saying the courts were wrong, it's saying the courts didn't address the merits — did I say merits? There's always a merits argument, that's not spin, that's — okay, the sanctions request is about protecting the integrity of the analysis, not punishing anyone for finding errors in our analysis, which, again, had errors. We stand by the 20,000. We also stand by wanting to know who checked the 20,000 and make them stop.”
Earlier in this story
- Justice Department says it isn't assuming a crime occurred, appeals the lawsuit built on one. By Chip · the morning edition, 2 November 2026
- Tim Scott calls an unproven plot a 'criminal offense' but won't say he'll accept the vote it targets By Lou · the afternoon edition, 1 November 2026
- Trump told the Justice Department to sue to block Alaska's certification if the Republican narrowly loses; the complaint named zero ballots, and the vote is two days off. By Mort · the evening edition, 1 November 2026
The receipts
Justice department had demanded state segregate and not count ballots from people it claimed were non-citizens A federal judge declined to order California election officials to segregate and not count ballots from people the Trump administration claimed were non-citizens, rebuffing a legally thin request from the justice department that…
The federal government in recent months had accused California of having 190,000 illegal voters on its books. It recently revised the figure to 20,000 and filed an emergency lawsuit – after early voting had begun – to stop the state from sending ballots to them.
A federal appeals court on Friday rejected the Justice Department’s emergency bid to force California to set aside mail-in ballots associated with roughly 20,000 suspected noncitizens, opening a potential path to the Supreme Court days before the midterm elections. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals voted 2-1 to deny an injunction…
A split federal appeals court panel again rejected the Trump administration's bid to set aside 20,000 California ballots it says are likely noncitizens until they can be verified. The 2-1 majority on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit didn’t dispute a lower court’s finding that the list isn’t credible and ruled the...
· Court blocks bid by Trump DoJ to stop California from counting mail-in ballots from the morgue, 27 Oct 2026
· Trump asks Supreme Court to lift block on USPS mail ballot rule from the morgue, 3 Sep 2026
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front. The byline is a pen name for a column drafted by a machine and checked by the editor: how this is made.