WASHINGTON — The Trump administration has issued more than 100 subpoenas demanding records on tens of thousands of voters in at least a dozen states, part of a widening hunt for unlawful voting by noncitizens ahead of next week’s midterm elections, Reuters reported Wednesday.
Most of the subpoenas went to state and local election officials in the past three months, though some date to the start of the year. Reuters identified them through public-records requests and interviews with officials, and many had not been reported before.
At least 44 came under grand jury authority, which ties them to criminal investigations and makes them generally harder to challenge in court than subpoenas issued directly by federal agencies, Reuters reported.
The demands varied widely. Some covered individual voters. Others sought entire local voter rolls containing tens of thousands of names. None of the jurisdictions contacted said they were resisting the subpoenas.
California drew at least 17 subpoenas to governments in Democratic-leaning areas, including Los Angeles and San Diego counties, according to Reuters. Subpoenas issued to Marin County and Fresno County had not been reported before.
In Massachusetts, a Trump-backed U.S. attorney sent grand jury subpoenas to at least eight cities and towns, six of them not previously reported, Reuters found. At least three demanded a list of all registered voters, with names, addresses, party affiliations, birth dates, voting status and voter identification numbers.
Philadelphia officials confirmed receiving at least four subpoenas for voting records. In Minnesota, subpoenas sought records on dozens of people in Anoka and Hennepin counties, where the administration has carried out a major immigration crackdown.
The Justice Department has charged at least eight people from those two Minnesota counties with voting as noncitizens, Reuters reported. All of the cases are ongoing, and no one has been convicted.
Washington state’s secretary of state office told Reuters it has received about 60 federal subpoenas in recent weeks seeking information on individual voters. Federal prosecutors said this week they had identified more than 400 people in the state who appear to be registered while not citizens, and asked officials to set aside any ballots cast by them until their citizenship is verified.
“The Trump administration is sending a clear message that anyone who illegally votes in our elections will be held accountable,” White House spokesperson Lauren Bis said in a statement to Reuters. “Only Americans should be electing America’s leaders.”
The Justice Department declined to confirm or deny its use of subpoenas in noncitizen voter investigations, but told Reuters it “will enforce the law wherever the evidence leads.” The Department of Homeland Security did not respond to questions.
Since Trump returned to office, prosecutors have accused at least 147 people of illegally voting under a federal “voting by aliens” statute, including 102 since the start of September, according to a Reuters analysis of court filings and federal records. Most of the cases remain unresolved. Together they amount to fewer than one for every million people who voted in 2024.
Multiple studies and the Reuters analysis have found that noncitizen voting is exceedingly rare.
Some election officials and lawyers told Reuters the investigations could help build a false narrative that American elections are vulnerable to widespread fraud, and could be used to attack the legitimacy of narrow defeats in tightly contested races.
Paul Charlton, a former U.S. attorney for Arizona in the Republican administration of George W. Bush, told Reuters the subpoenas are “clearly a distraction” for local and state election officials.
In Lynn, Massachusetts, city clerk and election chief James Lamanna told Reuters that federal prosecutors subpoenaed records for 25 to 30 people. “Up until now, they’ve found one instance of someone voting in an election that shouldn’t have been voting,” Lamanna said.
“This doesn’t reach the level of something serious and pervasive that it would jeopardize the integrity of an election.”
The subpoena campaign sits alongside a court fight over the administration’s lists of alleged noncitizen voters. At a district court hearing Tuesday in the California case, attorneys for the secretary of state, Los Angeles County and outside groups argued that the federal government’s data was outdated and flawed, and a “recipe for disenfranchisement” of U.S. citizens, CNN reported.
Bill Essayli, the first assistant U.S. attorney for the Central District of California, argued at the hearing that the federal government had “developed credible evidence” of noncitizens on the rolls that California refused to address, according to CNN.
Legal experts told Reuters the records obtained through the subpoenas could figure in disputes over the midterm results. Democrats need to gain four Senate seats and five House seats to take control of Congress.
Have something to promote?
Bring your business, services or event to our readers.