A US federal judge has rejected the Trump administration’s attempt to make California election officials set aside mail-in ballots from about 20,000 people it alleges are not US citizens.
David Carter, a district judge in California, ruled that the request breached longstanding constitutional principles under which states administer their own elections. He said the government’s process for identifying suspected non-citizens was vague and not credible enough to justify withholding the ballots.
“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,” Judge Carter wrote.
He added: “In bringing this lawsuit, the Executive would have this Court believe that it reigns as a sole sovereign. But California and its people are sovereign, too.”
The ruling is the latest setback for the administration’s efforts to increase federal control over election administration ahead of the November 3 midterm elections, in which voters will decide control of the House of Representatives and Senate.
Judge Carter warned that granting the application could allow either political party to “create chaos for their own political purpose to disrupt the election process”. He said more than 20,000 registered Californians could lose a right that generations of Americans had fought to preserve.
The administration had asked election officials to keep the ballots separate until the voters’ citizenship could be verified. Judge Carter said the measure would represent a “monumental change” to election procedures while voting was under way and could disenfranchise lawful voters.
“Individuals who have met the requirements of California’s voter registration laws must not be deprived of a core right merely because of unfounded allegations stemming from a procedure rife with uncertainty and errors,” he said.
Concerns over the list of suspected non-citizens
The Justice Department sued California, its secretary of state Shirley Weber and Los Angeles County registrar-recorder Dean Logan earlier this month. It said roughly 20,000 suspected non-citizens were registered to vote and had received mail ballots, and gave election officials 48 hours to examine its list.
Federal and California law prohibit non-citizens from voting. The administration argued that failing to separate the ballots risked diluting the votes of American citizens and undermined efforts to protect election integrity.
California officials described the lawsuit as a “reckless political stunt” intended to cast doubt on election results. Anne Bellows, a deputy attorney general for the state, told the court that the proposed order would be “incredibly disruptive” and a “recipe for disenfranchisement”.
Lawyers for California and Los Angeles County questioned the reliability of the government’s data, saying it was unclear when the administration had obtained the state’s voter-registration information and whether it had used outdated records.
Of the 20,000 records, just over 7,000 had addresses in Los Angeles County, lawyers said. A review of 200 records found that more than half related to registrations that had been cancelled or made inactive, meaning no ballot had been sent.
Los Angeles County officials also said that, among the 200 voters who had reported their birthplace, just over 38 per cent indicated they had been born in the United States. An official from US Citizenship and Immigration Services later said the agency’s own review found that none of those 200 people had been born in the US.
However, the official acknowledged that an ongoing analysis had identified about 189 records with minor data discrepancies among the list sent to California.
During a hearing, Judge Carter questioned why prosecutors could not pursue cases after the election rather than risk preventing lawful votes from being counted. He noted that returned ballot envelopes contained identifying information that could be used to investigate anyone believed to have voted illegally.
“The remedy as a good prosecutor is to make sure these people are prosecuted,” he told Justice Department lawyers.
The US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit had already dismissed the administration’s appeal after a two-to-one ruling on Monday, finding that the district judge had not been given adequate opportunity to consider temporary relief.
Voting in California began in early October, when mail ballots were sent to registered voters. More than 3.5 million mail ballots had been returned statewide, while lawyers for Los Angeles County said more than 550,000 had already been processed there.
The administration has also sought action in Washington state over ballots from more than 400 people it alleges are not US citizens, and has sued election officials in Alaska in an attempt to block certification of its Senate results if the Republican incumbent, Dan Sullivan, loses.
