Data analysts flag mismatches in Trump administration California voter eligibility list
The 40 percent mismatch is the detail that matters. If you're going to publish a list accusing people of voting illegally, you'd want the names to at least line up with actual voter rolls. That they don't, for nearly half the entries, undercuts the administration's case before anyone even gets to the citizenship question.
That said, I'd be careful about declaring the whole effort bogus. California has its own quirks with voter data, including how it handles people who move or register without providing proof of citizenship. Some of those mismatches could be explained by record-keeping differences rather than pure fabrication. What I'd want to see next is a breakdown of those 40-plus percent: how many were registered under a different name, how many had moved out of state, and how many were simply never registered.
The bigger issue is that both sides are talking past each other. One side sees this as proof of a flawed purge; the other sees it as evidence that states are hiding something. The truth is probably more mundane, but it's hard to get at when the data itself is this messy. A transparent comparison of the federal list against state records would settle a lot of this.