California Decides Governor & Billionaire Tax Tuesday Amid Roll Suit

With Election Day arriving Tuesday, California voters are preparing to choose a new governor and decide whether to tax billionaires, KCBS News Anchor Peter Finch and Claremont McKenna College political science professor Jack Pitney discussed Sunday on KCBS Radio, even as the U.S. Justice Department escalated two federal court battles Sunday over its list of more than 20,000 suspected noncitizen voters in California, according to The Associated Press on KCBS Radio.

Justice Department Seeks Contempt Review Over CHIRLA and UCLA Voter-List Study

In Washington, D.C., U.S. District Court Chief Judge James Boasberg ruled Friday that the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights (CHIRLA) could access federal government data on the 20,000 people the administration alleges are noncitizen voters in California, ordering the plaintiffs not to disclose individual names and to use the data strictly for legal-standing arguments.

On Saturday, attorneys for CHIRLA and the University of California, Los Angeles' Voting Rights Project filed court papers reporting that their analysis found more than 40% of the people on the 20,000-name federal list do not appear in California's statewide voter file, while identifying 22 people on the list who are likely naturalized U.S. citizens alongside thousands more apparent U.S. citizens.

In a Sunday court filing, the Justice Department defended the accuracy of its list — which it said was compiled from state voter registration data compared against federal citizenship records — and argued that the plaintiffs' filing amounted to "political grandstanding" unrelated to legal standing, suggesting Judge Boasberg refer the plaintiffs and their counsel for investigation of possible criminal contempt of court. UCLA Voting Rights Project spokesman Alberto Lammers responded in an emailed statement that "Plaintiffs' counsel and their experts fully complied with the Court's orders."

Monday Hearing Set as DOJ Appeals Judge Trina L. Thompson’s Friday Order

In a separate San Francisco federal case, the Justice Department on Sunday appealed a Friday night ruling by U.S. District Judge Trina L. Thompson that barred the department from demanding that California county election offices remove alleged noncitizens from voter rolls, segregate their ballots, or threaten criminal prosecution after issuing subpoenas to local registrars.

Noting that Judge Thompson issued her order before the federal government filed its initial arguments, the Justice Department sought immediate review, and Thompson scheduled a Monday hearing on the appeal. Earlier in the dispute, another federal judge in California and two appellate judges rejected federal demands to separate ballots on the eve of Tuesday's gubernatorial and billionaire-tax election, warning that last-minute orders would "wreak havoc" on election administration.