Election Eve at the Supreme Court: the Trump Administration Asks the Justices to Keep 20,000 California Ballots From Being Counted
One day before the midterms, the Justice Department took its fight over California's voter rolls to the nation's highest court — asking for an emergency order to separate and hold the mail ballots of more than 20,000 voters it says are likely noncitizens.
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, Reuters reported. The Justice Department's emergency request asks the court to order California to separate any ballots cast by people on the list — amassed by the Department of Homeland Security and sent to state and Los Angeles County officials — and not count them until each voter's citizenship status is verified. "Once illegally cast ballots are counted and commingled with lawful votes, the resulting harm is impossible to remedy," the Justice Department wrote in its filing, as reported by Reuters.
The request escalates a case the department filed on October 15, claiming California is unlawfully preventing its enforcement of the 1996 federal law that makes it a crime for noncitizens to vote in federal elections. Two courts have already refused. U.S. District Judge David Carter denied the administration's request on October 28, writing, as Reuters reported: "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." The San Francisco-based 9th Circuit refused again on Friday, emphasizing the state's power over election procedures and warning that siding with the administration could result in disenfranchisement and "could jeopardize the county's entire election."
California has said its safeguards against noncitizen voting are robust and that the lawsuit threatens to deprive 20,000 people of their right to vote based on vague accusations, arguing the federal process for flagging voters is flawed and likely rife with errors. The broader record is part of the dispute: multiple studies and state audits show ineligible voting is rare, and a Reuters investigation published in July found just 129 cases in which noncitizens had been charged with voting illegally since the 1996 law passed. What is at stake on Tuesday is not small — California holds 52 House seats, more than any other state, and Democrats need a net gain of four seats to take the House majority. The Supreme Court's handling of the emergency request, Reuters noted, could take into account the short time left before Election Day.
