Video taking off 17x its usual first day

San Bernardino gets two-day DOJ deadline for voter citizenship checks

NBCLA's report examines federal demands to set aside certain ballots and California officials' rejection of the underlying claims.

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NBCLA Story of October 25, 2026Trari Newsroom

Why this story? The video opened at a pace of 82,387 views a day, 17 times a normal first day on this channel (4,922).

California counties face DOJ pressure over voter eligibility verification

Charisse Gibson reports from a North Hollywood voting center preparing to open, with election officials facing a federal demand over whose ballots should be processed.

Her NBCLA report shows a Justice Department letter giving San Bernardino County's registrar two days to help verify citizenship information for more than a thousand people. The department is demanding that officials set aside ballots linked to people it suspects are noncitizens. Those suspicions are not established findings of ineligibility.

Federal prosecutor Bill Essayli told NBC4 that similar letters had gone to essentially every California county. Gibson also shows his public argument that California does not verify citizenship status and that federal authorities had done that work themselves.

The report drew about 77,000 views in its first 20 hours, far beyond NBCLA's usual first-day audience for Shorts. Its comment section was also much busier than usual, though the central issue in Gibson's reporting is the demand arriving just as select counties prepare to begin in-person early voting.

California officials dispute the Justice Department's claim that thousands of suspected noncitizens appear on voter rolls. Gibson presents Senator Alex Padilla's response: he says the department has supplied no evidence of massive voter fraud and rejects its authority to interfere with election administration.

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