San Diego County voters have until 8 p.m. to cast the final ballots of the 2026 election Tuesday, and then voting officials who have had a highly unusual last few weeks will do the routine work of counting them all. It was only one week ago that the county refused a Trump administration demand to turn over private information on 1,709 local voters and to set their ballots aside.
The U.S. Department of Justice has said repeatedly that those voters are among 20,000 likely noncitizens in the state of California. The county has countered that the federal government’s list is unreliable and that following its demand would break the law.
Facing a demand and a lawsuit, California responded the same way. San Diego County is not part of that lawsuit, but the 1,709 names came from the same statewide list at issue in the suit.
The Justice Department took its case to the U.S. Supreme Court Monday following a series of federal court rulings in California’s favor. The court rejected that appeal within hours.
Here’s everything you should know as Americans head to the polls in the midterm election.
This story on San Diego’s clash with the DOJ over voter records comes from persistent local reporting. Help us keep digging into the legal battles shaping your ballot.
What did the Justice Department want?
On Oct. 23, the DOJ hand-delivered a letter to San Diego County Registrar of Voters Shawn Brom from Adam Gordon, the U.S. attorney in San Diego. It gave the county 48 hours to agree to cooperate and warned against actions that “risk significant federal scrutiny and legal exposure.”
The letter asked for each voter’s Social Security number, state ID or driver’s license information and voter registration documents. It also said ballots from anyone whose citizenship could not be confirmed should be set aside and not counted until citizenship could be confirmed, but not canceled permanently.
Every other California county received a similar letter. There are 58 counties in the state.
Why did San Diego County refuse?
County Counsel Damon Brown wrote in an Oct. 27 response that the county is “legally prohibited” from complying.
California law prevents the release of confidential voter information without a court order or a confidentiality agreement, he wrote. State law requires the registrar to process ballots when they arrive, and federal law restricts systematically removing voters in the 90 days before a federal election.
The registrar also has no authority to investigate anyone’s citizenship on its own, Brown wrote.
He called the demand “a thinly veiled voter purge” and said threats of criminal charges against election officials were “an effort to unlawfully intimidate” officials and voters.
The county said it may take legal action of its own.
Imperial County also refused a similar request covering 161 voters.
But didn’t the county hand over voter records earlier?
It did. Between March and September, federal prosecutors sent the registrar five grand jury subpoenas seeking records on 25 voters, some dating back to 2011. One subpoena asked for “the ballot itself.” The county said it complied “as required by law” but produced no ballots and no record of how anyone voted.
It told inewsource that it does not maintain records that can link voters to their ballots.
Those records helped the feds build 28 cases of voting related charges statewide, including four cases tied to San Diego County. On Monday, First Assistant United States Attorney Bill Essasyli announced new charges against six more people in Los Angeles County in the Central District, alleging they registered to vote and voted and then lied about it on their citizenship applications.
California has about 23 million registered voters.
Why did the county comply once but not twice?
The requests that the county complied with were subpoenas, legally binding orders that prosecutors use in criminal investigations.
The letter demanding that the county set aside 1,709 ballots was not.
Brown wrote that the department offered no legal authority for getting private data “without a subpoena or warrant.”
Is the federal list accurate?
The county says there are “significant reasons to doubt” it.
San Diego County’s spot check of about 170 names, or 10% of the local list, found 59% had canceled registrations and 74% had no record of voting in the county.
Two data experts at the UCLA Voting Rights Project, whose lawyers are suing over the list, reported wider problems in a sworn declaration filed Saturday. Data scientists Matt Barreto and Michael Rios wrote that 8,880 of the list’s 20,930 names — 42% — were “not anywhere to be found” on California’s current voter file when compared by name and birth date.
The file the government gave them left out voter ID numbers, which they said would have made the comparison more precise.
The Justice Department called the UCLA Voting Rights Project report “political grandstanding” and asked U.S. District Chief Judge James Boasberg to consider contempt, saying it broke his order limiting how the list could be used.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security said in July that as many as 190,000 noncitizens were registered in California. The federal count later fell to about 20,000. U.S. District Judge David Carter wrote that he “cannot conclude” the government’s process is credible.
Trent McCotter, the acting deputy U.S. attorney general who has said removing noncitizens from elections protects citizens’ votes, has acknowledged the list could include citizens.
“We’re not perfect,” he said.
What have the courts said?
When Judge Carter rejected the department’s request to set aside about 20,000 California ballots on Wednesday, he wrote in his ruling that it “would wreak havoc and disrupt the election that is already underway.”
On Friday, U.S. District Judge Trina Thompson temporarily barred the departments of Justice and Homeland Security from threatening election workers with prosecution for counting ballots as the law requires. The Trump administration has appealed.
In a 2-1 ruling that also came Friday, a federal appeals court also refused to order the ballots set aside. The ruling said there is “no feasible way” to single out specific ballots “without potentially catastrophic effects on the entire system.”
Just hours after the government filed an appeal, the Supreme Court rejected the request to intervene in the election.
In the appeal, U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer called setting ballots aside a “modest remedy.” State and local election officials and federal judges have said that it would jeopardize election integrity and the ability to get votes counted on time and isn’t warranted given the DOJ’s questionable evidence.
Does any of this change how San Diegans vote?
No! The San Diego County Registrar of Voters Office has said voters “can continue to cast their ballots with confidence and without fear.”
What’s going to happen next?
The Trump administration’s attempts to uncover widespread voter fraud, which experts and available research say is extremely rare, don’t look like they will end on Election Day.
The criminal investigation is also moving forward. Three Los Angeles County election employees have been subpoenaed to testify before a federal grand jury Wednesday, the day after the election.
The San Diego County Registrar of Voters Office confirmed to inewsource Monday that it hadn’t received any additional subpoenas.
Judge Carter is scheduled to hear from witnesses on the reliability of the federal list on Friday, Nov. 13.
Judge Thompson has scheduled a hearing that same day on whether to issue a longer-lasting order protecting election workers.
California counties must certify their election results by Dec. 3, and the state has until Dec. 11.
Craig Missakian, the U.S. attorney for Northern California, said last month at a press conference announcing charges for voting-related crimes that “this operation will remain in place through the election and beyond.”
Catch up on all our coverage
Federal prosecutors access San Diego County voter records as Trump alleges US voter fraud
‘Unprecedented’: San Diego politicians blast DOJ subpoenas for local voting records
DOJ’s San Diego County subpoenas: 25 voters, 15 years of records, one request for a ballot
Four face criminal charges in San Diego County amid sweeping federal voter fraud probe
How the DHS voter-fraud probe reached San Diego’s registrar and got reined in by a judge
Trump DOJ threatens San Diego election officials: Set aside ballots or face consequences
San Diego County rejects DOJ request to set aside 1,709 ballots, threatens own legal action
