Why this matters
The subpoenas would show what the federal government is seeking — and what the local government is handing over — during what experts say is an unprecedented investigation of the American election system.
San Diego County election officials received five grand jury subpoenas from the U.S. Justice Department for voter information this year, the county Registrar of Voters Office said.
Sarah Sweeney, a spokesperson for the county, and Antonia Hutzell, a spokesperson for the registrar’s office, said that they do not know what investigations prompted the subpoenas. But experts say they appear to be part of a broader effort by the Trump administration to find evidence of widespread voter fraud, a search that has found relatively little.
Wendy Weiser, vice president for democracy at the New York-based Brennan Center for Justice, a nonpartisan law and public policy institute, called the subpoenas in San Diego County and across the country “highly unusual.”
She said they appear to be “part of a broader sweeping fishing expedition in order to try to identify and uncover elusive non-citizens who were inappropriately registered to vote.”
“Their operation appears to have reinforced the facts that have been repeatedly shown from all other prior investigations, audits, enforcement actions, that this is not a problem in our elections. They are secure and any exceptions are vanishingly rare.”
The Registrar of Voters Office received five grand jury subpoenas between June 1 and Sept. 16 A county spokesperson disclosed their existence in response to questions from inewsource about federal requests for voter information.
“When legally required, the County complies with these requests,” Hutzell said. ”The ROV is not informed of the nature or scope of the related investigations, and there is no evidence of widespread voter fraud in San Diego County.”
Sweeney said each of the five subpoenas requested “different categories of records.” She said they generally sought information that the county is required to disclose under state and federal law like registration records and voting history but not how an individual voted.
inewsource has filed a public records request for the subpoenas so it can report on what the federal government is seeking — and what the local government is handing over — during what experts say is an unprecedented investigation of the American election system.
A Homeland Security Investigations official said this week that the Trump administration’s effort to remove noncitizens from voter rolls has led to about 1,600 voter fraud cases and 160 arrests. The country has 211 million active registered voters. Trump and his aides have claimed without proof tens and even hundreds of thousands of noncitizens are illegally registered to vote.
The Los Angeles Times reported this week that the L.A. County registrar’s office also received at least five subpoenas for voter information this year in the Central District of California. Voting officials there have released redacted versions of the subpoenas to the L.A. Times, setting a precedent for San Diego County voting officials to follow suit and release copies to inewsource.
When contacted by inewsource, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District declined to comment on the subpoenas or say whether it is investigating voter fraud in Los Angeles or San Diego County.
Prosecutors in L.A. have announced two voter fraud cases. In one case, three people have been accused of using stolen identities to sign ballot petitions. In another, a single lawful permanent resident, commonly known as a green card holder, from Honduras was charged with falsely claiming U.S. citizenship and registering to vote.
Similar federal requests for voter information have reached election offices across the country, including Nevada, Ohio, Minnesota, Michigan and Texas, according to national news reports.
A ProPublica analysis in August of Justice Department data found fewer than 150 suspected noncitizen voters were referred for prosecution from January 2025 through May 2026 and 41 were charged with illegal voting or other election-related crimes, despite a large deployment of Department of Homeland Security resources dating back to 2025 to seek find noncitizen voters.
Many of these leads were generated using the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements or SAVE database, but a federal judge blocked its use of the database to search voter rolls in June, finding officials unlawfully shared Social Security records and risked misidentifying eligible voters.
The U.S. Supreme Court put that ruling on hold Sept. 25 while the federal government appeals, so the expanded system can operate for now. The Supreme Court noted that federal law restricts systematic voter-roll removals in the 90 days before a federal election.
Election Day is Nov. 3 and early voting has begun in some states. It starts Monday in California.
David Becker, director of the nonprofit Center for Election Innovation and Research in Washington, D.C., said he doesn’t recall a similar voter fraud investigation “ever having been done on any kind of scale.”
“It does appear that there have been a lot of resources redirected away from things like violent crime and counterterrorism, which is where Homeland Security usually focuses its efforts,” he said.
The investigations are just one of several Trump administration interventions in elections ahead of the November midterms.
Last month, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down an attempt by the Trump administration to make mail-in voting more difficult ahead of the November midterm elections.
The U.S. Department of Justice has also filed lawsuits against 30 states, including California, and against Washington, D.C., to obtain voter roll information; courts have dismissed 24 cases, according to the State Democracy Research Initiative, which is based at the University of Wisconsin Law School.
Type of Content
News: Based on facts, either observed and verified directly by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources.
