Roughly a week ahead of the midterm elections, the U.S. Department of Justice
(DOJ) made its presence felt in San Luis Obispo County.
On Oct. 26, the county Clerk-Recorder’s Office issued a public statement about receiving a hand-delivered letter from the DOJ three days prior. The letter demanded confidential voter registration information of “63 likely aliens” living in the county.
“Within 48 hours, we ask that you commit to working with the DOJ and DHS [Department of Homeland Security] to identify who on the accompanying list is a citizen and who is not,” First Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Central District Bilal Essayli wrote. “That means sending us the nonpublic information associated with each suspected alien’s registration.”
SLO County Clerk-Recorder Elaina Cano rejected the DOJ’s demand letter to segregate 63 ballots in the upcoming election. She told New Times that most, if not all, of California’s counties received a similar letter. Neighboring Santa Barbara County didn’t respond to New Times’ requests for comment by press time.
In her public statement, Cano pointed to Elections Code Sections 15105 and 15106, which set requirements governing challenges to people who vote by mail.
“These procedures exist to protect the integrity of elections while ensuring that eligible voters are not improperly denied their right to vote,” she said. “The demands presented in the DOJ’s letter are not a substitute for those legally prescribed procedures. A list of individuals alleged to be ineligible to vote does not, on its own, authorize our office to set aside their ballots or disregard established election law.”
The DOJ intervention is part of “Operation Protect the Vote”—a self-described coordinated effort among all four California-based U.S. Attorney’s Offices to crack down on alleged fraud in elections. The DOJ’s letter to the SLO County Elections Office arrived months after the DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin alerted California Secretary of State Shirley Weber that there were possibly “numerous noncitizens” in the state registered to vote in the federal election.
When Weber asked for more information, the DOJ provided a list of 20,000 names with accompanying personal identifying information on Oct. 13. Two days later, the Trump administration sued California and Los Angeles County to try to force elections officials not to count those 20,000 registered voters’ ballots in the midterm elections.
The administration has made similar allegations in states across the country.
On Oct. 19, federal law enforcement arrested 11 foreign nationals living in the U.S. who are among 28 green card holders charged with fraudulent voter registration and illegal vote casting. On Oct. 26, the DOJ announced similar charges involving 48 people living in California, Pennsylvania, Florida, New York, and Nevada.
In the letter to SLO County, the DOJ asked Cano to provide the Social Security numbers, copies of state IDs or driver’s licenses, copies of the voter registration application, and copies of the documents submitted during registration of the 63 people under scrutiny.
If Cano is unable to confirm a person’s citizenship status, the DOJ requested their vote-by-mail ballot be segregated until the status can be determined.
The DOJ addressed the National Voter Registration Act’s “quiet period,” which prohibits large-scale maintenance of voter registration lists 90 days before a federal election.
“That is misplaced,” the letter said. “The NVRA’s 90-day limitation applies only to systemic list-maintenance programs—not to targeted, individualized evidence of unlawful voting identified by federal law enforcement.”
Cano said she won’t be modifying the voter registration during the quiet period pursuant to the law. She confirmed that each of the 63 “likely aliens” appear in the county’s voter database but didn’t specify their citizenship status.
Now, the SLO County Counsel’s Office is reviewing the DOJ correspondence to draft a formal response. The DOJ didn’t respond to New Times’ request for comment.
Cano has rebuffed past efforts to obtain confidential voter information. In March, she turned down demands from a secessionist group called New California State Movement, which wanted to investigate records related to the 2024 general election and the Proposition 50 special election.
“We take allegations of improper voter registration seriously and will always cooperate with lawful investigations conducted through appropriate channels,” Cano said in the latest statement. “But cooperation does not mean setting aside the laws we are sworn to uphold.”
