On Monday, the Trump administration's top federal prosecutor in Los Angeles revealed that California's voter ID rules are so lax that nobody was checking whether voters were American citizens, with what he says is at least half a million voters on the rolls who never provided documentary proof of identification.
The prosecutor, Bill Essayli, first assistant U.S. Attorney for the Central District of California, made the case in an interview with Bill Melugin on Fox News. He said the state runs voter registration on the honor system, with no one in government confirming citizenship and the state accepting an applicant's word instead. Essayli's interview came in the wake of the arrest of Darwin Rivera Flores, a Honduran national, on charges of illegally registering to vote in California.
Fox News co-anchor Bill Melugin walked through the case with Essayli. Rivera is a noncitizen born in Honduras, and prosecutors at the Department of Justice obtained the voter registration form he filed last year. On it, Rivera checked the box attesting he was a U.S. citizen born in the United States. He signed the form under penalty of perjury.
Prosecutors say Rivera never actually cast a ballot; the registration itself, and the citizenship attestation on it, are the charged crimes.
"There's no one checking this, right? It's entirely the honor system, unless the Feds check it," Melugin asked.
"This case really highlights the vulnerability in California's voter rolls," Essayli said. "They basically allow anybody to register to vote on the honor system. There's nobody in government that is checking to confirm you're a citizen, and in fact, in this case, he, on the form, [put] down a California driver's license and a Social Security [number], which he had, because he has a visa, [but] that does not prove you're a citizen. And according to the Secretary of State, they say at least half a million people don't even provide that information when they register to vote."
In a post on X, he put the exact number at 400,000 California voters who registered without providing any identifying information at all.
According to Newsweek, 36 states require some form of identification at the polls, whereas 14 states and Washington, D.C. verify voter identity by other means. The requirements range from strict rules on photo IDs to alternative methods, such as signed affidavits or election officials verifying the information. In California, no proof of citizenship is required, no passport is needed, and no birth certificate is necessary in order to register to vote. People applying for the right to vote must provide their California driver's license or state ID number, or the last four digits of their Social Security number. A unique identifier is given to anyone who provides neither of these. Immigration status is not included in the process.
The registration process leaves little room for scrutiny. An applicant can list a fake address, check a box stating they have no ID, check another stating they have no Social Security number, and the state processes the form regardless.
A driver's license or Social Security number might sound like sufficient proof. Rivera had both. He obtained them through a visa, and neither document establishes citizenship. The documentation the state accepts does not answer the question the state is supposed to be asking.
California Attorney General Rob Bonta fired back, accusing Essayli of ignoring election-interference accusations aimed at his own boss.
"While ICE Homeland Security Investigations is not able to comment on any active investigations, HSI is actively rooting out and investigating election fraud wherever it can be found," a DHS spokesperson told Newsweek. "We have repeatedly demonstrated that illegal aliens can and do vote in our elections. Under President Trump, HSI is committed to restoring integrity to our election systems and ensuring that American citizens and only American citizens are electing American leaders."