A split OC Board of Supervisors won’t be directing the Orange County registrar of voters to turn over unredacted records related to non-citizens’ removal from voter registration lists after the Department of Justice sued for the information.
The Justice Department sued Registrar of Voters Bob Page in June, arguing he did not provide full records related to the removal of non-citizens from voter registration lists. The Justice Department alleged that Page did not maintain an accurate voter list in violation of the Help America Vote Act, a 2002 law that made sweeping reforms to the country’s voting process.
Page, through the county’s counsel, has denied those allegations. He maintained he would have violated state and federal law if he had turned over sensitive personal information of voter registrants to the Justice Department without a subpoena or court order, attorneys said in response to the federal government’s recent lawsuit.
The claim in the lawsuit is that the registrar of voters has an obligation to produce without redaction the voter registration records of 17 individuals who self-reported being non-citizens or whose ineligibility was confirmed by the OC District Attorney’s Office, said County Counsel Leon Page, who is not related to the registrar of voters.
Bob Page, in responding to the federal government’s request, had redacted certain personal and sensitive information, including driver’s license or state ID numbers, Social Security numbers, language preferences, race and signature images, both the initial lawsuit and the response from county counsel said. Bob Page has said those 17 people have already been removed from the county’s voter rolls.
Supervisors Don Wagner and Janet Nguyen asked their colleagues on Tuesday, Aug. 26, to direct the registrar’s office to turn over unredacted information on those 17 people and move to settle the litigation brought by the Justice Department. After a 40-minute discussion, their request was denied in a 2-3 vote.
“This material should be turned over, and we should get out of this litigation immediately,” Wagner said. “The wheels will not fall off the registration system in this county if those 17 records are turned over to the government agency that sits atop us in many, many ways.”
But Board Chair Doug Chaffee said those 17 people gave information to the registrar’s office under the assumption it would be kept confidential and took issue with asking the registrar to turn over the unredacted records.
“I don’t know how we can give confidential information out without their consent,” Supervisor Chaffee said. “It bothers me that you can go in and give confidential information, much like in a doctor’s office, and all at once somebody or some agency could go in and say ‘I want that information,’ without your permission.”
“The way this gets resolved is simply for the court to order the disclosure,” said Supervisor Katrina Foley, who, along with Chaffee and Supervisor Vicente Sarmiento, rejected the request.
Seconds after the item failed, Wagner’s office issued a statement expressing disappointment in the vote.
“Our registrar of voters defended his actions by likening it to anyone in the public walking in off the street and demanding information,” Wagner said in the statement. “But this is hardly the case. It is the federal government demanding information to comply with perfectly reasonable and constitutional rules that only our citizens get to vote in our elections.”
“California law may not prize election integrity,” he added, “but Orange County should.”
Orange County District Attorney Todd Spitzer told supervisors Tuesday there is no evidence of rampant voter fraud in the county.
His office takes referrals from the registrar when there is a case of voter fraud that needs to be investigated, Spitzer said. “In general, I haven’t felt personally that it’s (voter fraud) widespread as I think some people have argued.”
Bob Page, during Tuesday’s meeting, said his office has removed 176,000 people from the voter registration rolls following the November 2024 election. Those people could have been removed for any number of reasons, he said, including they moved away, were convicted of a felony or have died.
There are 1.9 million registered voters in Orange County.
Registrar offers a solution
The registrar of voters’ office has attempted to work with the Justice Department on a way to share the requested confidential information that protects against public disclosure and identity theft, but the federal government has not accepted the offer, Leon Page, the county counsel, said in an email.
“That’s an agreement that the U.S. Department of Justice has refused to discuss,” Page said.
A spokesperson for the Justice Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
As for any movement in the case, District Court Judge David Carter has yet to issue a scheduling order, Page noted.
But Carter did recently reject an attempt from Orly Taitz, a Laguna Niguel attorney known for her conspiracy theories about former President Barack Obama’s birthplace, to file an amicus brief in support of the Justice Department.
The issue at hand stems from information requested by the Justice Department — and it comes amid the Trump administration’s crackdown on immigration enforcement and threats to change how the country votes.
The Justice Department said the redacted data “prohibits the attorney general from making an accurate assessment” of the registrar’s compliance with election laws. It also said Bob Page relied on state law for the basis of the redactions, which it said is preempted by federal law.
“At the end of the day, we are thumbing our noses at the federal government,” Wagner said. “In this environment, not a good look for us.”
But correspondence between representatives for the Justice Department and legal counsel for the registrar’s office — obtained and reviewed by the Southern California News Group — showed there was an effort made by the registrar to provide the “sensitive information,” just in a manner that would include “assurances that such sensitive personal identifiers will remain confidential and be used for government purposes only.”
And Bob Page’s attorneys argued “that the unprotected disclosure of such sensitive personal information without a subpoena or court order is prohibited by California and federal law.”
Notably, the lawsuit is led by Harmeet Dhillon, an assistant attorney general and former vice chair of the California Republican Party; Bill Essayli, a U.S. attorney and former Inland state legislator; and Michael Gates, the Huntington Beach city attorney turned deputy assistant attorney general.
And this lawsuit isn’t the first time Gates has questioned Page over the possibility of non-citizens voting.
While still the Huntington Beach city attorney, Gates posted a photo on X of a ballot that he said was mailed to someone who has lived in the U.S. for 10 years, but is a non-citizen and has never voted before. The name and most of the Huntington Beach address are blurred out in the photo, which appears to be a mail ballot envelope from the Orange County registrar of voters.
Gates also emailed Bob Page twice in October regarding “suspicious” ballots, according to records obtained by the Southern California News Group.
Meanwhile, President Donald Trump has taken steps to overhaul the country’s election process.
He signed an executive order in March that calls for stricter voting rules, including requiring voters to provide proof of U.S. citizenship to register, not counting ballots received after Election Day and prohibiting non-U.S. citizens from donating in certain elections.
More recently, the president has said he wants to do away with mail voting.
In 2022, still feeling the impacts of the pandemic, nearly 89% of Californians voted by mail. And in 2024, nearly 81% chose to cast their ballots that way, according to data from the California secretary of state.
It is up to states and local jurisdictions to run the ins and outs of elections. In California, it’s an elected secretary of state who is in charge of overseeing elections, including certifying the lists of who is running for state offices, coordinating tabulation of votes for each county on election night and preparing voter information in various languages, among other things.