Chicago voters can cast ballots in 12 different languages this election, an expansion that Illinois Republican Party Chairman Bob Grogan warns is making an already complicated election system harder to independently monitor.

Grogan told Fox News Digital the proliferation of versions in languages such as Tagalog, Gujarati and Urdu creates additional challenges for election judges and party observers tasked with ensuring voters receive accurate ballots. He also questioned how many voters need some of the translations, arguing that many immigrants who speak those languages also speak English.

"It's a solution in search of a problem," Grogan told Fox News Digital. "It's big city virtue signaling."

TRUMP ADMIN SUED OVER ALLEGED ILLEGAL COLLECTION OF SENSITIVE VOTER DATA FROM 47 STATES

Chicago voters can cast ballots in 12 different languages: English, Spanish, Chinese, Hindi, Korean, Tagalog, Polish, Gujarati, Urdu, Ukrainian, Arabic and Russian.

Section 203 of the U.S. Voting Rights Act requires the Chicago Board of Elections to make materials and ballots available in certain precincts for Spanish, Chinese and Hindi speakers, a spokesperson for the elections agency told Fox News Digital. The Board includes the other non-English languages to "maintain uniformity with the languages used by the Cook County Clerk's office under a county ordinance, so that all voters throughout Cook County are afforded equal voting opportunities," the spokesperson added.

But Grogan, a former DuPage County auditor for 12 years, said he has "a fair number of Gujarati friends ... and everyone in their family speaks English."

"Gujarati — it's from India, and English is an official language in India," Grogan added.

TRUMP ADMIN'S PROPOSED 'ENGLISH-ONLY' HEAD START RULE DRAWS FIRE FROM LOS ANGELES MAYORAL CANDIDATE

Data provided to Fox News Digital by the Chicago Board of Elections shows that some of the less commonly used language options accounted for only a handful of ballots cast during the March primary. Just nine ballots were cast using the English-Gujarati option, while 15 used English-Urdu, 10 used English-Arabic and 25 each used English-Russian and English-Ukrainian, according to the Board's figures.

Other translations were used more frequently, including 4,474 English-Polish ballots, 2,183 English-Chinese ballots, 664 English-Hindi ballots, 352 English-Korean ballots and 100 English-Tagalog ballots.

Grogan also questioned why language requirements can change substantially across county lines, noting that Chicago offers touchscreen ballots in 12 languages while nearby DuPage County offers fewer language options.

"You can have a Gujarati population in Peoria," Grogan said. "You would think that there would be some more uniformity to all of that as well."

SIGN UP TO GET THE POLITICS NEWSLETTER

Beyond questioning the need for some of the translations, Grogan raised a broader concern about oversight, arguing that election judges and party observers cannot independently scrutinize ballots written in languages they do not understand.

However, the Chicago Board of Elections pushed back, telling Fox News Digital that it has in-house staff who help translate ballots and signs and assist multilingual media ahead of elections. It also said voters are allowed to bring "interpreter[s] to assist them in understanding and casting their ballot" under certain conditions.

When asked about multilingual judges, the Board noted that of the 7,218 election judges assigned for November's general election as of Thursday, 810 are multilingual candidates. Those multilingual judges include speakers of Spanish, Chinese, Hindi, Urdu, Gujarati, Polish, Korean and Tagalog, according to the Board.

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE FOX NEWS APP

Pressed on whether he believes the additional languages create an election security vulnerability, Grogan said the risk depends in part on how widely the translated ballots are used.

Overall, the Board's figures show 7,857 multilingual ballots were cast during the March primary, representing about 1.85% of the 424,564 ballots cast citywide.

"I think it certainly makes it harder to monitor," Grogan said. "If there is one ballot cast in that language, that's a very small vulnerability you have. If all of a sudden we have 10,000 in some very small, poorly understood language, then that increases the risk."

Fox News Digital asked the Chicago Board of Elections how many languages are available for mail-in ballots but did not receive a response in time for publication.

Attorney General Todd Blanche refused to rule out whether the Department of Justice could seek to intervene in states’ midterm election certification processes, saying there are extreme scenarios that could prompt federal action.

Speaking to reporters in Virginia on Thursday, Blanche said it was not his intention to "improperly interfere with elections," but declined to rule out federal involvement if a "doomsday scenario" were to happen.

"Of course, there’s scenarios that we can all come up with hypothetically, you know, some doomsday scenario, for example, right?" he said. "So, I don’t think it’s proper to make any kind of conclusory statements about what’s going to happen in the future, because I have no idea what’s happening in the future."

Blanche said he could not say there were no circumstances under which the DOJ would get involved.

NEWSOM SPARS WITH TRUMP-APPOINTED PROSECUTOR OVER 20,000 SUSPECTED NONCITIZENS ON VOTER ROLLS

"Of course, I’m not going to say that," he said. "But am I planning my days around the election to be somewhere to not certify? Of course not, no, not at all."

The DOJ's role in elections is limited under the Constitution and federal law, allowing it primarily to safeguard civil rights and prosecute people who violate election law. Federal law does not specifically authorize the department to challenge ballots or delay a state's certification of election results.

Under the Constitution and federal law, U.S. elections are run by state and local officials rather than the federal government.

During a news conference in Norfolk, Blanche was questioned about the DOJ's litigation against states, seeking to force officials to turn over unredacted voter data and halt the counting of ballots cast by thousands of voters the federal government argues are likely noncitizens.

TRUMP ADMIN SUED OVER ALLEGED ILLEGAL COLLECTION OF SENSITIVE VOTER DATA FROM 47 STATES

Blanche said the DOJ was "not trying to create chaos" but wanted to alert officials to potential problems.

"I’m not trying to not have an election certified. Of course not," Blanche said. "What we’re trying to do is guarantee to the American people that the only people that are voting are people that are eligible to vote."

In response to Blanche's comments, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said Senate Democrats "have been preparing for this for months and will be ready" for whatever administration officials try.

"As Trump and his cronies attempt to steal this election, we are fighting them at every turn," Schumer posted on X. "Our elections must always belong to the voters — not Donald Trump."

The administration sued California election officials last week, arguing they failed to act quickly enough to review names the federal government identified as likely noncitizens. The DOJ asked a judge to block the state from counting mail-in ballots from those individuals unless their eligibility could be confirmed.

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE FOX NEWS APP

The California secretary of state's office said it was given only 48 hours to review roughly 20,000 names.

The DOJ was also weighing additional election-related litigation against states, but a federal judge this week temporarily restricted certain election-related field operations and interviews in nine states through Election Day. The judge stayed the order until Friday evening to give the administration an opportunity to appeal.

Earlier this week, Democratic leaders and election groups filed a lawsuit against the administration, accusing it of "threats and intimidation" ahead of Election Day.

President Donald Trump has repeatedly said noncitizen voting poses a serious threat to election integrity, although documented instances of noncitizens casting ballots in federal elections have historically been rare.

A top federal prosecutor in California said federal investigators have determined that all 20,000 people they flagged on the state's voter rolls as "likely noncitizens" are not U.S. citizens.

Bill Essayli, the first assistant U.S. attorney for California's Central District, told Fox News Digital that federal investigators have evidence that these 20,000 individuals received mail ballots this month. His office sued California last week seeking a court order to prevent any ballots they return from being counted.

"We're not asking California to take any drastic steps other than to sequester the ballots from the suspected noncitizens," Essayli said in an interview on Wednesday. "We believe it's at a minimum of 20,000. That's the floor."

The potential ceiling, he said, is much larger. Essayli referenced a letter Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin sent to California in July that flagged nearly 200,000 voters as possible noncitizens.

DOJ OFFICIAL DEFENDS TRUMP'S NONCITIZEN VOTER PROBE ON '60 MINUTES,' ACCUSES SHOW OF EDITING OUT HER ANSWERS

Since then, federal investigators have been sifting through those records to identify people they believe they can verify as noncitizens.

He said 20,000 is only the current tally and expects thousands more names to be added in the coming days.

Earlier this week, Essayli got into a social media spat with Gov. Gavin Newsom over the state's safeguards against noncitizen voting.

Essayli argued that California is allowing people without citizenship onto the voter rolls through its supposedly lax verification processes, while Newsom said the state follows all relevant federal law governing the integrity of elections.

In court filings, California election officials have pushed back against the Justice Department's demands, arguing that county election offices lack both the authority and access to federal records needed to verify voters' citizenship status.

They have also said that sequestering ballots from people on the DOJ list is impossible in cases where the ballots have already been processed. Once a ballot's signature is verified, it is removed from its identifying envelope and processed alongside other ballots, meaning it can no longer be traced back to an individual voter.

STATE DEPARTMENT CONSIDERS SHARING PASSPORT RECORDS FOR VOTER CITIZENSHIP CHECKS

"That is true. That's why we're getting an emergency court order requiring them to put those ballots aside," Essayli said. "Ballots have already gone out, people are filling them out and they're being returned in process as we speak. So, the crime is occurring in real time."

The DOJ escalated its push for immediate court intervention Wednesday, asking the judge to rule on its emergency request by noon Thursday. In Los Angeles County alone, officials have already processed 331,000 ballots, according to court records.

Essayli's office filed suit on Oct. 15, roughly two weeks after California sent out mail ballots, including to the possible noncitizens on the DOJ list, according to the federal government.

When asked why the Justice Department didn't act sooner, Essayli explained that investigators did not know exactly which voters would receive ballots until they were sent.

ELECTION CRIME ARRESTS KEEP PILING UP AS DEMS INSIST IT 'JUST DOESN'T HAPPEN'

He said California should cooperate with the federal government to expedite the process of verifying voters' citizenship.

That would involve providing additional identifying information, including driver's license numbers and Social Security numbers when available, that federal investigators could cross-check against government databases.

California and dozens of other states treat this information as confidential and have refused to turn it over to the federal government, prompting the DOJ to take several of them to court.

In a separate lawsuit from Sept. 2025, the DOJ tried to compel California to provide its complete, unredacted voter-registration database, including names, Social Security numbers, home addresses and voting histories.

In January, a district court sided with California and dismissed the case, calling the government's request "unprecedented and illegal." The DOJ appealed the ruling and litigation is ongoing.

MAP IT: DOJ ILLEGAL VOTING CRACKDOWN SWEEPS 17 STATES AS RAZOR-THIN ELECTIONS FACE SCRUTINY

"If California will make available or submit its records, we can quickly put them through our established systems to determine who's a citizen and who's not," Essayli told Fox News Digital. "They're forcing us to do it the hard way, which we're willing to do because this is very important."

He said every person on the current 20,000-name list was individually reviewed by a federal employee at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and Homeland Security Investigations.

California officials, however, have questioned the reliability of the DOJ list.

Monica Flores, an assistant registrar-recorder in Los Angeles County, said in a court declaration that her office conducted a preliminary review of a sample of 200 records from the list that were associated with LA County addresses.

Of those, 112 corresponded to canceled or inactive voter registrations, meaning no ballot was mailed to those individuals for the November election, Flores said.

TRUMP ADMIN WANTS TO REQUIRE TAX FILERS TO DISCLOSE CITIZENSHIP STATUS TO IRS

"I don't believe that, actually," Essayli said. "The information we have is that they likely received ballots. So we are asking for the names of people they claim whose registration has been canceled."

Essayli added LA County did not say when these registrations were canceled. He raised the possibility at least some were canceled after federal officials provided the state with their list.

"If they're canceling now based on the records we provided, that's great news," Essayli said. "But that's all to be determined."

In the 200-person sample reviewed by LA County, Flores said that among records where birthplace was "meaningfully reported," 38.9% indicated the person was born in the United States, which she called "strong evidence of citizenship."

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE FOX NEWS APP

Essayli similarly disputed this conclusion, arguing that the birthplace information — much like the citizenship information itself — was provided by the registered voters themselves.

"They're not independently checking any of this information," Essayli said. "They're going off the information that was provided to them by the person who registered to vote."

The California Secretary of State's office and the LA County Registrar-Recorder's office did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital's requests for comment.

Essayli said that his office is determined to follow through with its investigation because "one noncitizen voting is too many."

"One illegal vote cancels out the vote of an American citizen. There are a lot of local elections that are decided on very few votes," he said. "Noncitizens cannot vote in federal elections, and we intend to enforce that law."

A Biden-appointed federal judge in California ruled Wednesday that the Department of Homeland Security must halt certain investigations into suspected illegal voting, citing concerns over voter intimidation.

U.S. District Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín, the jurist in question, was born in Mexico and nominated to the federal bench by President Joe Biden in 2022. Before becoming a federal judge, Martínez-Olguín spent about six years at the American Civil Liberties Union, a progressive civil rights organization, where she worked on women's and immigrants' rights issues.

The activist groups suing DHS "demonstrate[d] that they are likely to succeed in their claim that Defendants have run afoul of the Voting Rights Act’s prohibition of intimidating voter assistance and mobilization," according to Martínez-Olguín.

DOJ OFFICIAL DEFENDS TRUMP'S NONCITIZEN VOTER PROBE ON '60 MINUTES,' ACCUSES SHOW OF EDITING OUT HER ANSWERS

The public’s "interests in safe elections, free from interference or intimidation, far exceed (the government’s) purported interest in combating unlawful voting by non-U.S. citizens," she added.

The Trump administration, meanwhile, maintained that noncitizen voting in federal elections is a crime and that DHS has statutory authority to investigate suspected violations. Martínez-Olguín did not find investigating noncitizen voting as itself unlawful, but instead argued that DHS’ methods likely violate the law as it used unreliable source data and sent armed agents to homes to conduct interviews, which could constitute intimidation.

STATE DEPARTMENT CONSIDERS SHARING PASSPORT RECORDS FOR VOTER CITIZENSHIP CHECKS

Lawyers representing the federal government conceded that some American citizens may have been looked at in connection with DHS’ investigations, but contended that in-person interviews were "expressly designed to resolve the discrepancies."

Noncitizen voting is rare, but cases of illegal voting have been documented. News broke earlier this year, for example, that New Jersey erroneously placed over 6,000 non-citizens on its voter rolls. The Justice Department announced charges against 16 individuals in September, including noncitizens accused of voting illegally in federal elections, and brought additional election-related charges in October.

NEW JERSEY REMOVES 6,600 PEOPLE FROM VOTER ROLLS WHO WERE ELIGIBLE TO CAST A BALLOT FOR 2024 ELECTION

Martínez-Olguín’s order blocks DHS from carrying out certain field investigations into suspected illegal voting involving U.S. citizens in California, Connecticut, Georgia, Missouri, Nevada, New York, Pennsylvania, Washington and Wisconsin. Several of those states are led by Democrats who have opposed the Trump administration's immigration enforcement policies, and some face high-profile elections in November.

Cracking down on illegal voting has been a priority for the second Trump administration, though it has yet to produce evidence of widespread noncitizen voting.

The judge delayed enforcement of her order until Friday, giving the Trump administration time to appeal, and set the restrictions to expire on Election Day unless otherwise ordered.

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE FOX NEWS APP

"DHS is laser focused on identifying, prosecuting, and removing aliens who vote and dilute the votes of U.S. citizens. ONLY Americans should elect American leaders," a spokesperson for the department told Fox News Digital. "We have no plans to question or investigate people we believe to be U.S. citizens."

House Democrats' No. 3 leader is under fire for his opposition to voter ID in his home state of California.

House Democratic Caucus Chairman Pete Aguilar, D-Calif., spoke at a press conference earlier this month criticizing a measure on Californians' ballot this Election Day that, if passed, would mandate that voters show government-issued photo ID at the polls.

He made the comments just weeks before the Department of Justice (DOJ) announced a crime bust that saw several U.S. permanent residents accused of registering to vote despite not being citizens.

MAP IT: DOJ ILLEGAL VOTING CRACKDOWN SWEEPS 17 STATES AS RAZOR-THIN ELECTIONS FACE SCRUTINY

Rep. Ken Calvert, R-Calif., hammered Aguilar's opposition to voter ID and argued the DOJ's recent actions made it "obvious" that the ballot measure, called Proposition 39, was needed.

"Give me a break," Calvert told Fox News Digital. "You have to show an ID to board an airplane, cash a paycheck, rent an apartment or even buy cold medicine at the grocery store. Democrats claiming that requiring photo ID before casting a ballot is somehow 'racist' or 'voter suppression' is complete nonsense and an insult to every voter's intelligence."

NEW YORK CITY’S LONE REPUBLICAN IN CONGRESS ACCUSES MAMDANI, SCHUMER OF 'HYPOCRISY' IN VOTER ID FIGHT

Rep. Vince Fong, R-Calif., said voter ID "is basic election security that the vast majority of Americans support, and 36 states already require."

"While opponents are resorting to lies and fearmongering, Proposition 39 is commonsense reform in a world where you need an ID to rent a car, stay at a hotel, open a bank account or board a flight," Fong told Fox News Digital. "The DOJ's recent voter fraud bust in California is exactly why these safeguards matter."

Rep. Young Kim, R-Calif., similarly said showing photo ID is a "simple standard we already require to board a plane, purchase alcohol or pick up a prescription."

"This isn't controversial and it shouldn't be complicated. Our elections deserve at least as much consideration as a beer or a bottle of wine," Kim told Fox News Digital.

Aguilar, meanwhile, criticized Proposition 39 during a press conference with Democratic gubernatorial candidate and former Biden administration Cabinet Secretary Xavier Becerra earlier this month.

"We will not stand for this, because we will not stand for people to lose an opportunity to exercise their ability to vote. In Arizona, they tried this. They wanted folks to put their driver's license numbers on their ballots. Think about that. What if you miss one digit? Your vote doesn't count?" Aguilar proposed. "What if you're married in California? What if you're married, and you haven't changed your name and you go to vote? No longer will you be able to vote. That is what is at stake for Californians."

SCHUMER SAID 'DEMOCRATS SUPPORT VOTER ID' – THEN EVERY SENATE DEMOCRAT VOTED AGAINST GOP BILL

He called it a "voter suppression effort" pushed by Republicans.

"Republicans can win only when they suppress the vote. Donald Trump and MAGA Republicans know that they are bankrupt of ideas and solutions, and so they have to change the rules of the game," Aguilar said.

NEWSOM SPARS WITH TRUMP-APPOINTED PROSECUTOR OVER 20,000 SUSPECTED NONCITIZENS ON VOTER ROLLS

Meanwhile, the California government criticized the DOJ's operation while pointing to reports that said more of those charged were registered as Republicans rather than Democrats.

"For nearly a decade, Trump has baselessly alleged mass voter fraud rings were employed by Democrats and utilized 'illegal immigrants' to sway elections across the country – often pointing to California," a release on Gov. Gavin Newsom's state website read. "Courts at all levels have rejected the claims of vast voter fraud or that elections were rigged against the President."

Voter ID laws currently exist in 36 states and polls have shown they have a majority of Americans' support.

But in Congress, several efforts to pass federal voter ID legislation have been thwarted by Democrats in recent years.

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE FOX NEWS APP

Fox News Digital reached out to Aguilar's campaign for a response to his GOP House colleagues' comments.