Thumbnail photo by Monique Camarena
Del Norte County is declining to respond to a U.S. Department of Justice demand that its elections office segregate four ballots they say belong to noncitizens who are ineligible to vote, County Counsel Jacqueline Roberts said.
Del Norte is following the example of Humboldt, Fresno, Tulare, San Joaquin and other California counties who have received similar USDOJ demands, Roberts told Redwood Voice Community News via email Monday.
County officials are making this decision after thorough review of the letter Craig H. Missakian, U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of California delivered to County Clerk-Recorder Alissia Northrup last week. Roberts said her office is also taking into consideration the law and recent court decisions related to similar demands federal officials have made to county elections offices statewide.
Though she was initially worried about the demand letter, Northrup said her goal is to make sure Tuesday’s election goes off without a hitch.
“It’s really not a priority right now,” she said Monday. “I have to worry about the election first and if this comes later, I’ll deal with this then.”
The DOJ says the four “likely aliens” living in Del Norte County are among the more than 20,000 in California the agency says are illegally registered to vote. In his letter, Missakian said anyone knowingly tabulating ballots cast by individuals “identified by federal agencies as noncitizens, they risk becoming aiders and abetters to a federal crime.”
The day before Tuesday’s deadline in the 2026 midterm election, Northrup said her office was busy. She’s predicting a higher turnout for the November general election than the June primary.
Northrup said she’s also been fielding questions about the DOJ’s visit to her office on Oct. 26 from people who are worried about if it’s going to impact the election. Northrup pointed to an Oct. 30 order from the U.S. District Judge Trina L. Thompson of the Northern District of California granting a temporary restraining order against the DOJ and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
The order was filed on behalf of plaintiffs Service Employees International Union, American Federation of State County and Municipal Employees, League of United Latin American Citizens and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.
In addition to citing the letters the DOJ delivered to county officials across California, the order also states the DOJ and DHS also sent a letter to the State of Washington on Oct. 26 identifying possible non-citizens and demanding that the state’s secretary of state halt the processing of ballots.
The order also mentions the DOJ directing federal prosecutors in California to pursue criminal subpoenas against state and local elected officials, “supposedly for facilitating unlawful voting.”
Northrup, who has been the Del Norte County clerk for about 20 years, said she doesn’t expect to get a subpoena, but she also didn’t think federal justice officials would be paying her office a visit either — especially this close to an election.
In her order, Thompson states that the defendants established that the “defendants’ intimidation plan and implementing actions threatening state and local government election workers with criminal prosecution” violate the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the U.S. Constitution’s election clause and Fifth and Tenth Amendments.
“When state and local government employees perform the work of distributing, processing or counting ballots or otherwise administering the 2026 midterm election in the manner required by their state and federal laws governing the administration of elections, they do not violate federal criminal law even if a particular ballot belongs to a registered voter alleged by Defendants to be ineligible to vote,” Thompson writes.
Thompson ordered the DOJ and DHS to inform any state, county or local government official to whom they sent their letter that their demands and threats of prosecution have been enjoined.
“The court ruled that we don’t have to set those ballots aside,” Northrup told Redwood Voice.
The Trump administration on Monday asked the U.S. Supreme Court to weigh in on its ongoing dispute with California over the state’s voter rolls, NPR reported. This request comes after another federal judge called the administration’s actions as a “broad ongoing pattern of attempted election interference by elected officials.”
A divided 9th Circuit Court of Appeals panel also rejected the DOJ’s request to compel California to stop processing ballots belonging to thousands of people.
