On Election Eve, the Trump Administration Asks the Supreme Court to Set Aside 20,000 Disputed California Mail Ballots
Two courts have already refused. Now the Justice Department wants the justices to order California to separate — and not count — ballots from voters it says are likely noncitizens until each one is verified.
The Trump administration asked the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday to temporarily block California from counting mail-in ballots from more than 20,000 registered voters who federal officials allege are likely non-U.S. citizens — an emergency filing, one day before the midterm elections, in a fight two lower courts have already decided against the government.
The Justice Department wants the ballots cast by people on a Department of Homeland Security-compiled list separated from other ballots and left uncounted until each voter's citizenship is verified. 'Once illegally cast ballots are counted and commingled with lawful votes, the resulting harm is impossible to remedy,' the department wrote in its filing, in a case it brought on Oct. 15 under the 1996 federal law that makes it a criminal offense for noncitizens to vote in federal elections.
U.S. District Judge David Carter in Los Angeles denied the administration's request on Oct. 28, writing: 'Never before in American history has the federal government, on the eve of an election, sought to coerce a state and local government to abandon their own constitutional elections procedures and bend to the will of the executive branch.' Carter also questioned the reliability of the federal data, noting that people flagged as noncitizens in other states have repeatedly turned out to be naturalized U.S. citizens. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals refused again on Friday, emphasizing the state's power over election procedures and warning that siding with the administration could result in disenfranchisement.
California has told the courts its safeguards against noncitizen voting are robust, that the lawsuit threatens to deprive 20,000 people of their right to vote on vague accusations, and that the federal vetting process is flawed and likely rife with errors. Reuters reported that its own investigation in July found just 129 cases in which noncitizens had been charged with voting illegally since the 1996 law passed — many stemming from voter confusion or administrative errors rather than intentional fraud. The court gave no timetable, but any decision lands against the clock: polls open Tuesday, and California's 52 House seats are the most of any state in a midterm where Democrats need a net gain of four to take the chamber.
