LA County Registrar Confirms California Doesn’t Verify Citizenship of Registered Voters — and Most States Don’t Either

In a court filing that should surprise absolutely no one who has been paying attention, Los Angeles County election officials just confirmed they run their voter rolls on the honor system. They have no independent way to check whether someone is actually a U.S. citizen beyond the little box a registrant checks on a form.

Assistant Registrar-Recorder Monica Flores put it in black and white in a declaration opposing the Justice Department’s request for a temporary restraining order. The Registrar, she wrote, “is not equipped or authorized to verify voter citizenship because it does not independently house citizenship-related information beyond the voter attestation.”

No immigration records. No naturalization documents. No access to the federal SAVE database—California hasn’t even authorized it for this election. Just the box. Check it, and a ballot is on its way.

This is the system California (and Democrats) has insisted is airtight for years, even as critics pointed out the obvious flaw. Under state law and the federal NVRA and HAVA framework, citizenship is established by a registrant swearing under penalty of perjury that they are a citizen. That’s it. The county then mails ballots to every active registrant. The idea that this prevents noncitizens from getting ballots has always required a level of faith that the rest of the country has been increasingly unwilling to extend.

Most states still operate the same way. All 49 with voter registration systems demand only the attestation. A handful—Arizona with its long-running two-tier system that is under continuous legal challenges, plus newer or narrower rules in New Hampshire, Wyoming, South Dakota, Utah, and a few others—have at least tried to require some form of documentary proof. The majority, California included, have not.

Once the box is checked, the system has almost no practical mechanism to catch a noncitizen before the ballot goes out the door. Universal mail ballots and limited access to federal data only further undermine the ability to detect ineligible registrants

We have been saying this for years. The public filing simply makes it official.

If people are already willing to knowingly violate federal immigration law—crossing the border illegally, overstaying a visa, or committing the widespread, documented taxpayer fraud that has become routine throughout California (and seemingly everywhere)—what exactly is supposed to stop a foreign national from checking one more box? That single check grants access to a ballot and a voice in the government that decides their status, benefits, and enforcement priorities. The current system offers them every incentive and almost no risk of detection before the illegal vote is cast.

The admission came in the middle of a lawsuit the Department of Justice filed on October 15 (United States v. State of California, No. 2:26-cv-12025). First Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli’s office is involved in the effort to force the state and Los Angeles County to set aside ballots from more than 20,000 people federal agencies flagged as likely noncitizens. Federal law—18 U.S.C. § 611—makes it a crime for noncitizens to vote in federal elections.

The DOJ’s position is straightforward: if California cannot independently confirm these people are citizens, their ballots should not be counted until someone does. The complaint notes that even the federal government cannot realistically investigate tens of thousands of individuals in the short window left before Election Day. California’s response has been to refuse the request.

County officials argue the list is unreliable. Of the portion with Los Angeles addresses, a sample showed 25.8% listed a U.S. birthplace, and many registrations were already canceled or inactive. They also say sequestering ballots now is logistically impossible: millions have already been mailed, hundreds of thousands processed, and once verified they are anonymized and mixed in with everyone else’s. They cite the NVRA’s pre-election quiet period, due process, and the risk of disenfranchising citizens.

Secretary of State Shirley Weber has made similar points, calling earlier federal estimates of 190,000 possible noncitizens unsubstantiated and refusing to act on what she describes as an unsupported belief. (Some may argue that the lack of citizenship verification of citizenship makes our elections unreliable and runs the risk of disenfranchises citizens, but I digress).

Essayli highlighted the concession on X: “Massive concession: Los Angeles election officials just told a federal court they have no independent way to verify citizenship beyond what voters attest. (They simply take their word for it.)”

He added that California has not acted on the list of roughly 20,000 suspected noncitizens or agreed to set their ballots aside, and that American citizens’ votes are being diluted as a result.

The midterms are less than two weeks away. Ballots are already in the mail under the same system the court filing now describes in detail. Federal authorities have also charged 28 people in connection with the broader review; all remain registered voters. The case does not invent a new problem. It simply forces California officials to say, under penalty of perjury in federal court, what the structure of their system has made obvious for years: they take the registrant’s word for citizenship, and they have no independent way to check it.