Experts who got their first look at the Trump administration's list of supposed noncitizen voters found a major problem with it.
Lawyers for the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights (CHIRLA), an immigrant advocacy group, told the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia in a supplemental brief filed Saturday that citizens among the group's members and clients turned up on the Department of Homeland Security's list of 20,930 names flagged as ineligible to vote in California. The group and co-plaintiff Pedro Trujillo are suing DHS, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin and Attorney General Todd Blanche.
The filing relies on a report from Mathew Barreto, who holds a Ph.D., and data scientist Michael Rios. The pair analyzed the data file the government handed over under a court order issued Friday.
"Based on my experience using the California voter file and matching records using accepted methodology in the social sciences, I am certain there are entries on the CHIRLA citizen members and clients list that are on the DHS ineligible list of 20,930 names," the experts concluded.
According to the report, at least 22 entries on CHIRLA's citizen list fully matched the DHS list on first, middle and last name, date of birth and exact address. The experts described those as "criteria even more stringent than that employed by the DOJ/DHS in their various expert declarations." Two of those matches live in Santa Cruz County, the brief noted.
The experts also applied the looser standard the government treats as a probable match, using first and last name along with the birth year, street name or zip code. Under the standard, they found 6,140 CHIRLA citizen entries "at risk of investigation."
The analysis also found that 8,880 names on the list, or 42 percent, "were not anywhere to be found on the current California voter file."
The experts then extrapolated CHIRLA's match rate to the state's 3.8 million naturalized citizen voters. They estimated the list would produce 3,743 "certain incorrect matches," 7,486 "highly likely incorrect matches" and as many as 348,238 probabilistic incorrect matches, depending on the criteria and list accuracy the government uses.
The plaintiffs argued the review proves "that demands of election officials under civil and criminal threats" endanger the voting rights of CHIRLA's members and clients. They also argued that the list "endangers a significant number of eligible California voters, whether or not they are CHIRLA members or clients."