A Federal Judge Orders the Trump Administration to Stop Demanding California Segregate Ballots: 'The Lists Were Flawed'
Hours before Election Day, U.S. District Judge James Boasberg ruled that the administration's lists of suspected noncitizen voters included many people wrongly listed — and that California, not Washington, decides how to verify its voters.
A federal judge ordered the Trump administration on Monday to stop demanding that California election officials segregate ballots cast by people on its lists of suspected noncitizens, Reuters reported, in a ruling issued a day before the November 3 midterm elections. U.S. District Judge James Boasberg found that the lists the administration had compiled were flawed, and included many people who were wrongly listed as noncitizens.
"California may decide for itself what procedures to use for verifying the citizenship of registered voters," Boasberg wrote, as reported by Reuters. "The Executive Branch lacks authority to unilaterally impose its preferred procedures." Boasberg, who is based in Washington, was appointed by Democratic President Barack Obama.
The ruling lands in the middle of a fight that has now reached three courts in a week. The Justice Department sued California on October 15; U.S. District Judge David Carter denied the administration's request on October 28; the 9th Circuit refused again on Friday; and on Monday the administration also asked the U.S. Supreme Court for an emergency order to separate and hold the mail ballots of more than 20,000 voters on the Department of Homeland Security's list. That Supreme Court request remains pending. Monday's Boasberg order addresses the demands themselves — and finds the underlying lists unreliable, in a case where a Reuters investigation in July found just 129 instances of noncitizens charged with voting illegally since the 1996 federal law took effect.
