Former San Bernardino County Registrar of Voters Robert Page has been sued by the United States Department of Justice in his present capacity as Orange County registrar of voters for unlawfully concealing from federal officials records relating to the removal of non-citizens from voter registration lists.
Page finds himself caught in a situation which not only involves conflicting provisions of state and federal law but a circumstance which was revealed as a consequence of a complaint which brought into focus the long-talked-about accusation that non-citizens have been voting in California elections with the assonance of public officials.
Because the matter involving Page and Orange County was complaint-driven and the specific complaint germane to a situation in Orange County, the action taken by the Justice Department so far does not pertain to San Bernardino County. The Sentinel is informed, nonetheless, that there are “at least hundreds” of similar instances of voter registration applications having been provided to non-citizens throughout Southern California, such that the demands made of Page by the federal government are likely to be visited upon San Bernardino County election officials. How the San Bernardino County Registrar of Voters Office responds to the requests for information and/or action by the Donald Trump Administration, which in recent weeks has taken very aggressive action with regard to immigration enforcement in California, will be a controlling factor in whether Page’s successor as San Bernardino County Registrar of Voters, Stephenie Shea, will be subject to a civil court challenge similar to that faced by Page.
On Wednesday, June 25, the Department of Justice filed a complaint for injunctive and declaratory relief against Page, citing violations of Section 303(a)(2)(B)(ii) of the Help America Vote Act, 52 U.S. CODE § 21083 and Section 8(a)(4) and 8(i) of the National Voter Registration Act, 52 U.S. CODE § 20507(a)(4).
According to the complaint, “The Attorney General recently received a complaint from the family member of a non-citizen in Orange County indicating that the non-citizen received an unsolicited mail-in ballot from the Defendant, despite lack of citizenship. On June 2, 2025, the Attorney General requested the following documents from the Defendant: 1. Records from January 1, 2020, to the present showing the number of voter registration records in Orange County canceled because the registrant did not satisfy the citizenship requirements for voter registration. 2. Records from January 1, 2020, to the present related to each cancellation described in Request No. 1, including copies of each registrant’s voter registration application, voter registration record, voting history, and related correspondence sent or received by the County of Orange Registrar of Voters in regard to the registration.”
The complaint continues, “On June 16, 2025, the defendant responded to our request. In his response, the defendant provided data but redacted the following information regarding the non-citizens identified on the Orange County voter registration list: the California driver’s license and identification card numbers, social security numbers, California Secretary of State-assigned voter identification numbers, language preference, and images of registrants’ signatures. The defendant relied upon several California statutes as the basis for the redactions. On June 17, 2025, plaintiff responded to the defendant indicating that the redacted data that was [not] provided prohibits the Attorney General from making an accurate assessment of the defendant’s compliance with HAVA and the NVRA. Moreover, plaintiff communicated that the defendant’s reliance on state law to prevent the Attorney General from receiving information it is entitled to receive is preempted by federal law. Defendant is required to ‘maintain for at least 2 years and shall make available for public inspection and, where available, photocopying at a reasonable cost, all records concerning the implementation of programs and activities conducted for the purpose of ensuring the accuracy and currency of official lists of eligible voters[.]”
Those joining in on the civil enforcement action include U.S. Attorney for the Central District of California Bilal Essayli; United States Attorney Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon, who oversees the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division; Assistant U.S. Attorney David Harris, who is the chief of the California Central District office’s civil division; Assistant U.S. Attorney Katherine Hikida; Assistant Attorney General Michael E. Gates, of the office’s Civil Rights Division; and Maureen Riordan and Kevin Muench, the acting chief and an attorney, respectively, in the Justice Department’s voting session.
According to Essayli, Dhillon, Harris, Hikida, Gates, Riordan and Muench, Page has run afoul of Section 52 U.S.C. § 20507(i)(1), referred to as the “Public Disclosure Provision” the National Voter Registration Act by refusing to make a straightforward revelation of the non-citizens removed from Orange County’s voter rolls.
“Voting by non-citizens is a federal crime, and states and counties that refuse to disclose all requested voter information are in violation of well-established federal elections laws,” Dhillon stated. “Removal of non-citizens from the state’s voter rolls is critical to ensuring that the state’s voter rolls are accurate and that elections in California are conducted without fraudulent voting.”
Riordan, in a letter dated June 2, asked Page for records going back five-and-a-half years documenting voter registration cancellations of those determined to not be U.S. citizens, those canceled voter’s voting records, their registration applications, voting histories and any correspondence related to the cancellations. It was Page’s response, deemed inadequate by federal officials, that triggered the lawsuit.
An effort was made by Orange County Officials to steer a middle path with regard to the requests by the federal officials for the voting registration data. An impasse developed as lawyers for Orange County felt that voter registration information is confidential, based on some ambiguous state law. Federal officials believe that an effort by a non-citizen, particularly a unregistered alien, to register to vote is a violation of the law and any information relating to such an attempt evidence to which prosecutors have an unfettered right.
The Sentinel has learned that as federal prosecutors were intensifying their pressure on Page to produce the sought-after information, Orange County Counsel Leon Page, whose blood relation to Bob Page is unclear, assigned Assistant County Counsel James David Paul Steinmann to intercede with Riordan to see if some compromise between the requirements of state law and federal law could be arrived at with regard to this case.
In an email from Steinmann to Riordan obtained by the Sentinel, Steinmann asked, “To avoid a lawsuit, would the USDOJ consider another mechanism to enable the county to provide the USDOJ with this sensitive information?” Steinmann was angling toward preventing the information, including the names, relating to the foreign-born residents who had applied for voting status without being legally eligible to vote in the United States from being publicly disclosed. Federal officials, who have not ruled out prosecuting those who broke laws pertaining to fraudulent voting, were flat out unwilling to provide such an assurance, as the names and other aspects of the personal lives of criminal defendants would be subject to disclosure during the prosecutorial process.
When Steinman asked, “Would the USDOJ be amenable to entering into a confidentiality agreement that would enable us to provide records with assurances that such sensitive personal identifiers will remain confidential and be used for governmental purposes only?” federal officials demanded that Page and the other Orange County officials quit stalling and produce the requested documentation.
The following day, the suit was filed against Page. The suit calls upon the court to order that Page produce the requested information in unredacted form.