Supreme Court Rejects Trump Bid to Hold California Ballots
Justices denied a last-minute request to set aside 20,000 votes ahead of the November 3 midterm elections.
By Jabari Long ·
The United States Supreme Court denied the Trump administration's request to intervene in California's midterm vote count on November 2.
The court issued a one sentence order rejecting the Justice Department's application for an injunction. The refusal leaves two lower court decisions intact. Those earlier rulings had already blocked the federal government's attempt to disqualify specific ballots.
The dispute centers on 20,000 registered voters in California. Federal officials alleged these individuals were likely non-citizens. In October, the Justice Department sent a letter to California's secretary of state and the Los Angeles County Registrar. The letter demanded that ballots associated with those voters be set aside.
About a week later, armed Department of Homeland Security officials delivered letters to county officials and employees across the state. The letters threatened criminal charges if the ballots were not separated. California election authorities challenged the federal method for identifying suspected non-citizens. They stated the list contained numerous errors and warned that eligible voters could lose their votes. Officials also noted that separating ballots while voting was already underway was not feasible.
The decision arrives one day before elections that will determine control of Congress for the final two years of President Donald Trump's second term. The state has approximately 23 million registered voters. More than six million postal ballots had arrived by Sunday night, according to the California secretary of state's office.
The Justice Department argued in a 22 page brief that votes cast by non-citizens could undermine the value of valid votes. This legal effort is part of a long standing campaign by the administration against alleged voter fraud. Trump has frequently accused Democrats of allowing immigrants to vote illegally and has blamed postal voting for the issue.
District Judge David Carter criticized the government's actions in a ruling last week. He described them as an ongoing pattern of attempted election interference. Carter stated that the federal government's attempt to pressure state and local authorities into abandoning constitutional procedures immediately before an election was unprecedented in American history.
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