US Justice Department charges six more people with voter fraud in California

The US Department of Justice announced on Monday that it has charged six more people in California over alleged unlawful voter registration, one day before the US midterm elections. Bill Essayli, the top federal prosecutor in Los Angeles and a close ally of President Donald Trump, said his office was prosecuting the group. The move extends the administration's campaign against the state's election processes.

The charges

All six defendants hold green cards, meaning they are immigrants with legal status who are not permitted to vote. Prosecutors say they come from Mexico, Israel, the Philippines, Canada and Iran. Each faces a single count of making false statements on a naturalization application: according to the complaints, they claimed on their citizenship forms that they had never registered to vote. The complaints say they cast ballots in recent years, but they are not charged with fraudulent voting itself. The maximum sentence is five years in prison. Five of the six have been arrested, and none has yet been formally indicted.

Dispute over the list

The Justice Department is also suing to force California to set aside about 20,000 ballots that it says may belong to noncitizens. State officials call the list and methodology unreliable, and an immigrants' rights group said more than 40% of the people flagged could not be found on the state's voter rolls. California has more than 23 million registered voters. Essayli acknowledged the data "may not be 100%" accurate but claimed a very high confidence rate.

Multiple judges have rejected the department's efforts, and the US Supreme Court on Monday turned down the administration's appeals. On Friday a federal judge barred the department from continuing to threaten election officials with prosecution. Experts note that voting by noncitizens is very rare, while Democrats accuse the department of seeking to sow doubt about the election results.