Judge Blocks Federal Effort to Hold 20,000 California Mail Ballots

U.S. District Judge David Carter ruled on Wednesday that the Trump administration cannot compel California to set aside mail ballots from approximately 20,000 people the federal government claims are not U.S. citizens. The decision halts a legal push that sought to intervene in state election procedures just days before the November 3 midterm elections.

Carter, who was appointed by former President Bill Clinton, issued a 26-page order rejecting the Justice Department's request for temporary relief. He wrote that the federal government’s demand violates longstanding constitutional principles that grant states the authority to administer their own elections. Carter stated that the executive branch has never previously coerced a state to abandon its election procedures on the eve of a vote.

"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 wrote. He added that California and its people are sovereign as well.

The judge expressed skepticism regarding the government's argument that ballots should be excluded pending citizenship verification. He noted that the Justice Department could instead pursue indictments after the election using identifying information found on returned ballot envelopes. Carter described the requested remedy as a monumental change to election procedures while voting was still underway.

The federal government had given California 48 hours to review its list of suspected noncitizens and ensure their ballots were not tabulated until citizenship was confirmed. The state had more than 23 million registered voters. California officials criticized the lawsuit as a reckless political stunt and warned that segregating ballots would be incredibly disruptive. Anne Bellows, a deputy attorney general for California, called the requested order a recipe for disenfranchisement.

Los Angeles County, where only just over 7,000 of the 20,000 listed individuals reside, argued that the government's data was unreliable. A sample of 200 records showed that more than half corresponded to canceled or inactive voter registrations. While California officials noted that just over 38% of a sample of 200 voters indicated they were born in the U.S., a U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services official countered that none of those 200 people were U.S. born based on a separate review of immigration records.

More than 3.5 million mail ballots have been returned statewide, with over 550,000 already processed in Los Angeles County. The Justice Department argued that commingling lawful ballots with those cast by alleged noncitizens risks diluting American votes. The department maintained that it is not seeking to void any ballots, only to hold them for verification. The ruling comes as federal prosecutors in Washington and Alaska pursue similar efforts to scrutinize voter rolls in those states.