DOJ's flawed voter list is a reckless stunt in California
By Alma Cordero · Reporting from El Paso ·
Kamlesh Shah is 68 years old. He is disabled and lives with heart conditions that make stress a danger to his life. For 30 years, he has called the United States home as a legal permanent resident. He thought he was qualified to vote. He asked the election officer at a community center, and the officer just asked for his ID. Now, the Department of Justice is charging him with a federal crime.
Kamlesh Shah is 68 years old. He is disabled and lives with heart conditions that make stress a danger to his life. For 30 years, he has called the United States home as a legal permanent resident. He thought he was qualified to vote. He asked the election officer at a community center, and the officer just asked for his ID. Now, the Department of Justice is charging him with a federal crime.
This is how the state operates when it decides that fear is more useful than facts. The DOJ is not looking for "fraud." It is hunting for targets. By treating a confused senior citizen as a criminal, Pam Bondi’s DOJ has turned the voting booth into a trap. This is a reckless political stunt designed to chill the vote and intimidate the gente who keep this country running.
The machinery of the "likely" noncitizen
The attack began with a thumb drive. The DOJ delivered it to Los Angeles County last week. It contained a list of roughly 20,000 "likely noncitizens" identified by the Department of Homeland Security. The DOJ then sent a spreadsheet with the same names. They gave California a deadline to segregate these ballots unless citizenship could be verified.
Los Angeles County officials did what the federal government refused to do: they checked the math. According to NPR, a preliminary analysis showed the list is "unreliable." Registrar Dean Logan found that only 7,035 of those names even had addresses in Los Angeles County. Some were just duplicates.
The county reviewed a sample of 200 people. Monica Flores, the Assistant Registrar-Recorder, found that 38.9% of those where birthplace was reported were actually born in the United States. That is not a margin of error. That is a disaster. The Guardian reports that people in that sample had never even voted.
This is the same algorithmic cruelty we saw with the Department of Government Efficiency. They trade individual verification for "likelihood." They use private-sector data handling to create lists of suspects, then act shocked when the data is wrong. It is a system that values the speed of the purge over the rights of the citizen.
A policy of predetermined punishment
The DOJ is not just trying to clean a list. They are building a ledger of convictions. They have already announced criminal charges against 28 people. All are legal permanent residents. Among them is Juan Antonio Rivas Garcia, a Sacramento resident who is not fluent in English. KCRA reports his family only found out about the charges through the news.
This is the Zero Tolerance Policy in action. The mechanism is simple: remove all discretion. Do not look at intent. Do not look at the fact that a person registered through a state agency. Just apply a predetermined punishment to every single infraction. It treats a mistake made in confusion as a willful attack on the state. It is the same logic that allows the state to criminalize a man like Kamlesh Shah for believing his Real ID made him eligible to vote.
The DOJ claims California is practicing "willful blindness" by refusing to segregate the ballots. But the blindness is at the top. The DHS has resisted sharing how they matched these rolls. In Nevada, DHS once claimed noncitizens were on the rolls. When Nevada actually investigated a list of suspected noncitizens, they found every single one was a citizen.
The cost of the stunt
Acting Deputy Attorney General Trent McCotter admitted in a press conference that they are "not perfect." That is a polite way of saying they are reckless. When you are dealing with the right to vote, "not perfect" means you are disenfranchising Americans.
The state of California is right to fight this in court. To comply with a flawed list is to hand the DOJ a weapon to use against its own citizens. The DOJ is not protecting the law; it is using the law to create a climate of anxiety. They want people to look at Kamlesh Shah—depressed and anxious—and decide that the risk of voting is too high.
The DOJ is weaponizing administrative confusion to manufacture a narrative of fraud. They are using the Department of Government Efficiency to turn government databases into a dragnet. Justice requires that the charges against Shah and the other 27 residents be dropped immediately. The federal government must stop this attempt to hijack California's elections with a thumb drive full of errors. This is not about election integrity; it is about who the state decides is worthy of a voice.