California officials have likewise cast doubt on the administration’s claims of 20,000 ballots going to “likely non-citizens”, and they framed the administration’s lawsuit as an effort to interfere in the voting process.“At best, this litigation is a reckless political stunt,” lawyers for California Secretary of State Shirley Weber said in a court filing on October 20. “At worst, it threatens to disenfranchise thousands of Californians this election.”Trump’s Department of Justice has sued 30 states and Washington, DC, for complete access to voter rolls that include sensitive personal data.It has argued that releasing such information is necessary to prevent alleged voter fraud.But the department has lost 26 of those cases thus far, with opponents successfully arguing that such manoeuvres could scare away voters and interfere with state election administration.The Trump administration has yet to win any of the 30 cases.Despite claims to the contrary by Trump and his allies, cases of illegal voting, including by non-citizens, are few and far between. Non-citizens are barred from participating in federal elections in all 50 states in the US.In July, an investigation by the news service Reuters found only 129 cases of noncitizens being charged by federal authorities with illegal voting since 1996.Many of those cases involved mistakes, like administrative errors or individuals being uncertain of voting rules, rather than fraudulent intent.Voting rights advocates have also pointed to flaws in how the Trump administration has identified potential non-citizen voting, signalling some eligible voters may be disenfranchised as part of its efforts.Immigration agents under Trump have been assigned to ferret out non-citizen voters, in some cases knocking on doors to inquire about the citizenship status of the residents inside.Last week, the administration charged 28 immigrants in California with illegally voting.But reporting from the Los Angeles Times found that some of the accused reacted to the charges with confusion and maintained that they never registered to vote.Trump has a history of promoting false claims of election fraud in order to justify greater federal influence over the voting process.In 2020, he lost his bid for re-election to Democrat Joe Biden, but he denied his defeat, instead blaming vote “rigging”.

That claim prompted some of Trump’s supporters to storm the US Capitol on January 6, 2023, in an apparent effort to halt the election certification.