Oct. 28 (UPI) — A federal judge on Wednesday rejected a Trump administration effort to force California to remove mail-in ballots belonging to more than 20,000 registered voters it says are “likely” non-citizens, warning the move would
“wreak havoc” on the midterm elections and threaten Americans’ right to 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,” U.S. District Judge David Carter of the Central District of California said in his ruling.
“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.”
Federal lawyers swiftly filed an appeal.
The fight over the mail-in ballots goes back to last year, when the Trump administration sought to secure California’s unredacted voter registration rolls. After Carter dismissed the Justice Department’s lawsuit in January, federal investigators obtained commercially available voter registration data, which they cross-referenced with federal immigration and other records.
In July, the Department of Homeland Security claimed that as many as 190,832 noncitizens might be registered to vote in California. The state then asked the federal government to explain the methodology used to produced that number, but DHS officials declined to answer.
Then on Oct. 13 — nearly two weeks after Los Angeles County had begun mailing ballots to registered voters — the Justice Department provided Los Angeles County with a list of more than 20,000 registered voters it identified as “likely” noncitizens and gave the officials 48 hours to determine whether any were citizens and then segregate the ballots of those whose citizenship could not be confirmed.
The county responded that the list contained addresses throughout the state, not just Los Angeles County, while arguing that complying with the department’s demands would violate state laws as well as be impractical.
Shortly after the deadline expired on Oct. 15, the Justice Department sued California, alleging its mailing and counting of ballots from suspected violated the Constitutions’ Supremacy Clause by interfering with federal law prohibiting noncitizens from voting.
It then filed an emergency application for a temporary restraining order amid litigation.
Carter on Wednesday denied the federal government’s request for emergency relief, ruling the effort to exclude the ballots “violates longstanding constitutional principles mandating that states have control over their elections.”
“If plaintiff’s last-minute request for relief were granted, either party could create chaos for their own political purposes to disrupt the election process,” he said.
“Over 20,000 registered Californians would potentially lose the right that generations of Americans have fought to preserve.”
Carter also criticized the Trump administration’s broader efforts to obtain states’ voter registration records, stating that the Justice Department had not won any of the 26 decided cases.
He also questioned its demands for states to act on its own lists of alleged noncitizens registered to vote, pointing to its effort in Nevada where it had initially claimed there were nearly 16,000 registered noncitizens, a figure it reduced to a hand-picked subset of 185 — all of whom Nevada said were U.S. citizens.
“There is a clear remedy available. The United States can prosecute individuals according to Section 611, as it has historically and recently done. California also has established procedures to cancel the voter registrations of any individuals proven ineligible,” Carter said.
“Eroded trust in our democracy is irreparable. Once a vote is segregated, lasting harm has occurred. If the executive can discount votes and threaten an ongoing election due to unproven allegations, then our democracy is in danger.”