The US DOJ charges 63 people with electoral crimes in 15 States on the eve of the legislative elections

IN 30 SECONDS

• What has happened? The DOJ (the US Department of Justice) on Monday announced indictments against 63 people in 15 states for illegal voting, fraudulent registration and false citizenship statements.
• Who is behind? Attorney General Todd Blanche, who places the allegations within the election integrity priority of Donald Trump’s second term. Since January 2025, there have been 239 defendants.
• What impact does it have? It arrives on the eve of the vote and the same day that the Supreme Court refused to set aside 20,000 ballots in California. The Congress that comes out of the polls will mark the timing of the tariffs and defense spending that affect Spain.

The DOJ has charged 63 people in 15 states for electoral crimes on the eve of the legislative elections being held today in the United States.

The Justice Department announced the charges on Monday: illegal voting, fraudulent registration and false declarations of citizenship. Four of the accused are irregular immigrants; In the rest of the cases, the department has not specified the immigration status, so they could legally reside in the country without being eligible to vote.

Since donald trump returned to the White House In January 2025, the DOJ accumulated 239 defendants charged with crimes related to voting. In the last nine weeks alone, he has charged 195 non-citizens spread across 25 states, always according to his own counts.

Who are the 63 accused and what is attributed to them?

The affected states are Georgia, North Carolina, Maryland, Texas, Tennessee, New Jersey, Wisconsin, New York, Utah, Missouri, Nevada, New Mexico, California, Arkansas, and Pennsylvania. The pattern described by the accusation is heterogeneous: There are records dating back to 2000 and voters who registered and cast their ballot on the same day.

In several cases, defendants knew they were not U.S. citizens when they registered, the department maintains. The statement does not detail how many of the 63 cast a valid vote or in which elections.

The attorney general Todd Blanche framed the accusations in a doctrine: ‘These foreigners allegedly took advantage of the trust of the American people and defied the laws that govern our nation’s elections.’ He added that the department ‘will continue to investigate and prosecute voter fraud to restore confidence in our election system.’

In the United States, the integrity of the electoral roll ceased to be a debate among lawyers a decade ago: today it is a matter of primary political order.

The pulse with California: the Supreme Court responds in hours

That same Monday, the DOJ filed an emergency petition with the Supreme Court to intervene in its dispute with California over more than 20,000 registered voters the administration identifies as presumed noncitizens. The response came hours later: the judges rejected it without dissenting votes and left the decisions of the lower courts standing.

The department maintains that citizenship must be verified before counting those ballots and asked to set them aside. California responds that the federal list contains substantial errors and that withdrawing those votes would leave citizens entitled to it without suffrage.

Washington does not ask permission.

The sequence matters. First the accusations, then the attempt to set aside ballots in the most populated state in the country. The coincidence with election day is not a minor detail, and the department presents it as the result of an ongoing investigation.

Washington Logic

To understand the movement you have to look back. For nearly half a century, census control was managed with an administrative tool: Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which required certain states and counties — especially in the South — to seek federal authorization before changing any electoral rules. That mechanism, the preclearancefell in 2013 with the ruling Shelby County v. Holder. Since then, the department has no preventive means: it only has the criminal option.

The logic responds to a problem that the administration considers structural: 195 non-citizens charged in nine weeks and a sustained distrust of the Republican electorate towards the censuses managed by the states. The most useful precedent is not Reagan or Nixon, but the HAVA law of 2002passed with bipartisan consensus following the 2000 Florida recount: When the legitimacy of the vote is called into question, Washington has responded with legislation, federal money, and common standards. The difference in 2026 is the instrument. Instead of a law, a battery of accusations.

The manual has changed.

For Spain the issue is not foreign. The composition of the Congress that emerges from the polls determines the speed with which issues that directly affect Spanish interest are negotiated: the review of tariffs, the defense spending demanded by NATO and the technology regulatory calendar. Santander and Iberdrola They work in a market where the legislative majority changes every two years.

There is also a consular angle. Any purification of censuses based on citizenship databases affects the naturalized population, and that includes Spaniards who obtained US nationality and who, due to faulty data matching, could appear as non-citizens. It is the type of failure that an electoral system takes months to correct.

The projection has two windows. The first, this week: the result will decide whether the DOJ maintains the pace of accusations or if the House opens an investigation into the verification criteria. The second, in January, when the new Congress is formed and the composition of the judicial committee is known, the body with the power to summon the attorney general.

The polls will respond before the courts.

Case File

• The case: The DOJ charges 63 people in 15 states with illegal voting, fraudulent registration and false declarations of citizenship, on the eve of the legislative elections.
• Key data: 239 charged since January 2025; 195 noncitizens in 25 states in nine weeks; four defendants are irregular immigrants; more than 20,000 voters in dispute in California.
• For Spain: The electoral result conditions the calendar of tariffs, defense and technological regulation that affects Spanish companies in the US.