LA Registrar Says Citizenship Check Stops at Voter’s Word—Even After Federal Charges
23rd October 2026
A legal fight over election integrity is playing out in Los Angeles courts this week, with LA officials admitting that they have no way to check citizenship beyond what voters write on the form.
Monica Flores, an assistant registrar-recorder at the Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk’s office, told a federal court Tuesday that their citizenship check stops at whatever a voter writes on the form. That admission came just a day after the Department of Justice charged 28 people with lying on that exact form to register and vote.
“The Registrar has no authority under state or federal law to withhold or set aside the ballot of a registered voter on the basis of a third party’s assertion that the voter may not be a citizen, has no information beyond the voter’s own attestation with which to determine citizenship, and has no lawful means of obtaining such information,” the filing states.
“Finally, I do not believe the Registrar has authority to or can comply with either the government’s proposed injunction that it ‘confirm the citizenship of [each] person who sent a segregated vote-by-mail ballot’ or that it do so beyond relying on a ‘person’s registration-related attestation’ of citizenship as designated in state and federal law,” the filing adds.
The admission leaves the county with a simple problem. Just last week the DOJ delivered a list of over 20,000 names to the LA County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk, claiming the individuals on the list were likely noncitizens who are registered to vote in the state. The county declined to set those ballots aside, arguing it has no authority to act on a third party’s assertion and no independent way to check the names itself.