DOJ threatens L.A. County with lawsuit over voter rolls Play

In Washington, the U.S. Department of Justice has threatened a potential lawsuit against Los Angeles County over our voting rolls. This is the latest move by the Trump administration to assert control over California election rules ahead of the midterms.

The Los Angeles County Elections Director was given 48 hours to review a thumb drive with the names of people suspected to be undocumented in the L.A. County area. The feds want the state to cross-check those names with the voter rolls. The Justice Department threatened a lawsuit if the deadline — which expires Thursday — is not met.

County Elections Director Dean Logan says he has not looked at the Trump administration's thumb drive. He wrote in a statement obtained by Politico that doing so would conflict with established data privacy and information security protocols in Los Angeles. Logan says federal and state laws are clear on how voter eligibility is established, and any action to remove a voter from the rolls must be based on verifiable information, not an allegation of unconfirmed data matching.

Federal prosecutors in Washington did not say how they came up with the list of suspected names, or how many L.A. County residents are supposedly on it. The Trump administration has asked L.A. County to hold off counting any ballots returned by people on their secret list.