Trump Administration Takes California Ballot Fight to the Supreme Court Over 20,000 Voters on a Noncitizen List

President Donald Trump's 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 in a story read in full by the desk this cycle. The Justice Department filed the emergency request as it seeks to prevent counting the disputed ballots until each voter's citizenship status can be verified, escalating a legal fight that could affect thousands of voters in the November 3 midterm elections. A federal appeals court refused the request on Friday.

"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. The list of 20,000 registered voters was amassed by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and sent to California officials and to Los Angeles County officials. The department sued in federal court on October 15, claiming California is unlawfully preventing its enforcement of a 1996 U.S. law that makes it a criminal offense for noncitizens to vote in federal elections, and that California's action violated the Constitution's Supremacy Clause.

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, calling the administration's process for scrutinizing voter lists flawed and likely rife with errors. U.S. District Judge David Carter in Los Angeles denied the administration's request on October 28. "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, noting that people recently flagged as noncitizens in other states have repeatedly turned out to be naturalized U.S. citizens. The San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals also refused on Friday to block the ballots, 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." Reuters noted that a Reuters investigation published in July found just 129 cases in which noncitizens had been charged with voting illegally since the 1996 law passed, and that the Supreme Court's review of the emergency request could take into account the short time frame before Election Day. California holds 52 House seats, more than any other state, and Democrats need a net gain of four seats to win a House majority.