On Tuesday, 20 October 2026, Los Angeles County officials filed in court a preliminary analysis of the federal list of about 20,000 people whom DHS calls “likely noncitizens” registered to vote in California. It is a finding on a sample, in a case file. It is not a sentence. It is not a purge already carried out.

NPR: the Justice Department is demanding that California segregate ballots tied to those names. The state, in the same case, writes that the request is unfeasible this close to the election and would break election laws. “At best, this litigation is a reckless political stunt,” California wrote. That is a party’s position, not the judge’s verdict.

Last week DOJ took a thumb drive to Los Angeles County. Officials refused to plug it into a computer, citing the security risk. The next day the list arrived by email. Registrar Dean Logan: of about 20,000 names, 7,035 had Los Angeles County addresses, some of them duplicates. The statewide list and the county slice are not the same number.

Assistant registrar Monica Flores wrote that a review of 200 people is preliminary, that quality control is continuing, but that “the October List is unreliable.” Of those whose birthplace was “meaningfully reported,” 38.9% appear born in the United States, “strong evidence of citizenship.” That is not the same as “a quarter of the whole sample,” if the denominator is different. It is not a finding that the 20,000 are noncitizens.

ABC, on the same papers: nearly 40% of the sample indicate a U.S. birthplace, and 71.2% have no voting history. NPR: it is unclear how many people, in absolute numbers, sit behind the 38.9% figure. None of those percentages is a conviction for election fraud.

DOJ has separately announced charges against 28 people in California for voting crimes. That is another case, not proof that the list of 20,000 is a list of convicts. The litigation over the rolls remains open. No one in the sample is named here.

Image: Kenneth Hahn Hall of Administration, Los Angeles County, 30 April 2014, Visitor7, CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons. The county building in 2014, not Tuesday’s ballot box.

Sources consulted: Some “likely” noncitizens in Calif. found by DOJ may be U.S.-born — NPR; ‘High percentage’ of DOJ’s California noncitizen voters list born in US, preliminary LA County analysis shows — ABC News.