Washington, DC — President Donald Trump threatened California election officials with prison Friday as his administration escalated a dispute over more than 20,000 people the Justice Department claims may be noncitizens who received mail ballots.
“They will all go to jail for a long period of time!!!” Trump wrote on Truth Social after the Justice Department warned state and local officials that knowingly processing ballots cast by ineligible voters could expose them to criminal investigation.
The administration has not publicly produced evidence showing that the roughly 20,000 people it flagged are actually noncitizens or that they intend to vote illegally. California officials say voter eligibility cannot legally be revoked based on unverified data matching.
The Justice Department sued California Thursday seeking to block ballots from the flagged voters from being counted until their citizenship can be confirmed.
Secretary of State Shirley Weber and Los Angeles County Registrar Dean Logan have challenged the reliability of the federal data. Logan said officials cannot withhold ballots “based solely on unverified allegations.”
The confrontation comes less than three weeks before the Nov. 3 midterms and follows a broader administration campaign to obtain voter records nationwide.
Noncitizen voting in federal elections is already illegal, and documented cases remain exceptionally rare. A federal judge recently blocked a separate Justice Department voter-roll program after finding it violated federal privacy and procedural laws.
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