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Washington — A federal judge on Wednesday rejected the Trump administration’s bid to require California election officials to separate out mail ballots received from roughly 20,000 people it claims are not U.S. citizens.
The decision from U.S. District Judge David Carter is the latest setback for the Trump administration in its efforts to exert more federal control over election administration just ahead of the Nov. 3 midterm elections, when voters will decide which party controls the House and Senate.
Carter said that the Justice Department’s request for California to segregate and exclude more than 20,000 ballots violates “longstanding constitutional principles” giving states the authority to administer their own elections.
“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,” the judge wrote in a 26-page decision. “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.”
If he granted the Trump administration the relief it sought, either political party could “create chaos for their own political purpose to disrupt the election process,” Carter wrote.
“Over 20,000 registered Californians would potentially lose the right that generations of Americans have fought to preserve,” he said.
Carter echoed concerns raised by lawyers for California and Los Angeles County about the accuracy of the list of people that the Justice Department said are not U.S. citizens, writing that its protocol for verifying citizenship “raises significant concerns.”
The judge called the Trump administration’s methodology for creating the list “vague” and said he “cannot conclude that plaintiffs’ process is credible.”
Carter also warned that requiring California election officials to set aside mail ballots received from those alleged noncitizens would likely lead to disenfranchisement.
“Constitutional rights and our democracy are at stake. The public interest favors their protection,” he said. “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.”
The Justice Department plans to appeal Carter’s decision, according to a notice posted on the court’s docket Wednesday night.
During a hearing a day earlier, Carter appeared skeptical of the government’s arguments that thousands of ballots should be set aside and not counted while election workers verify they were cast by U.S. citizens.
“I think there’s always been an encouragement of people’s right to vote, we the people, because when we exercise our right to vote, we exercise equality,” Carter said.
The judge pressed the Justice Department as to why, rather than risk disenfranchising lawful voters, prosecutors can’t instead pursue indictments after the election of those they believe voted illegally. He noted the Justice Department can rely on the envelopes from returned ballots, which have identifying information, to show a noncitizen voted in violation of federal and state law.
“The remedy as a good prosecutor is to make sure these people are prosecuted,” he told Justice Department lawyers.
Carter said the Justice Department’s request to separate out ballots from people the government believes are noncitizens until their citizenship can be verified would be a “monumental change” to election procedures while voting is taking place.
The decision from Carter, appointed by former President Bill Clinton, came after the Justice Department went to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit on Friday and asked that court to require California election workers to set apart ballots from voters on a government list of 20,000 people it claims are noncitizens.
But the appeals court ruled 2-1 on Monday to dismiss the appeal, finding that the Trump administration failed to give the district judge “adequate opportunity” to consider whether to grant temporary relief.
The Justice Department filed its lawsuit against California, its secretary of state Shirley Weber and Los Angeles County registrar-recorder and county clerk Dean Logan earlier this month after it sent them letters claiming that roughly 20,000 suspected noncitizens were registered to vote and had received mail ballots. There are more than 23 million registered voters in California.
The government gave the elections officials 48 hours to review its list of people it said are ineligible to vote and asked California to ensure ballots received from them are not tabulated until their citizenship can be confirmed.
Shortly after California officials raised concerns with the accuracy of the list and the Justice Department’s demand, the government sued and asked the court to issue a temporary order requiring state election workers to sequester ballots from the suspected noncitizen voters.
The Justice Department has argued that California’s refusal to segregate the ballots risks diluting Americans’ votes. Additionally, because California is potentially commingling lawful ballots with those cast by alleged noncitizens, the state is thwarting Congress’s efforts to protect election integrity, Bill Essayli, the top federal prosecutor in Los Angeles, said during a hearing.
Federal and California law prohibit noncitizens from voting.
“There’s an interest in the American public having trust and confidence in their elections,” Essayli said.
He stressed that the Trump administration is not asking to void or cancel any ballots.
But California officials have denounced the Justice Department’s lawsuit as a “reckless political stunt” designed to cast doubt on its election results.
Anne Bellows, a deputy attorney general for California, told the court during the hearing that the relief sought by the Trump administration — an order prohibiting California from tabulating ballots from the voters it identified as “likely” noncitizens — would be “incredibly disruptive” for election officials and a “recipe for disenfranchisement.”
Lawyers for the state also said the Trump administration has not been transparent about how or when it received California’s publicly available voter registration list, raising concerns the government used outdated information to come up with its list of the 20,000 alleged noncitizens on the state’s voter rolls. The Trump administration said that it “enhances” that voter data using a third-party service.
Lawyers for Los Angeles County, meanwhile, warned that it would be “impossible” for election workers there to segregate ballots returned by alleged noncitizens by the end of the election period, since they would have to review ballot envelopes by hand to identify those received from voters on the Trump administration’s list.
And in court filings, Los Angeles County argued the Justice Department’s data is “unreliable.” Of the 20,000 records on the government’s list, only just over 7,000 had addresses in Los Angeles County, lawyers said.
Additionally, a review of a sample of 200 records from the list found that more than half corresponded to voter registrations that were canceled or inactive, so no ballot was mailed. For the sample of 200 voters who reported their birthplace, just over 38% indicated they were born in the U.S., Los Angeles County officials said.
But an official with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services said in a declaration filed with the district court that the agency conducted its own review of immigration records for the 200 people in the county’s sample and determined none were born in the U.S.
The official, Nicolas Bartell, separately acknowledged that as part of an “ongoing” analysis of voter data, USCIS identified roughly 189 records “with minor data discrepancies” that were on the list of 20,000 registered voters sent to California.
Voting in California has been underway since early October, when mail ballots were sent out to registered voters. In Los Angeles County, more than 550,000 ballots have already been processed, lawyers for Logan, the registrar-recorder and county clerk, said. More than 3.5 million mail ballots have been returned statewide.
President Trump has for months claimed that Democratic-led states had voters on their rolls who are not U.S. citizens, though instances of noncitizen voting are rare. The president’s claims are part of a broader effort by his administration to assert more control over federal elections.
Beyond the effort in California, federal prosecutors in Washington state asked election officials there to set aside ballots received from more than 400 people they allege are not U.S. citizens and warned legal action could follow. The Trump administration has also filed a lawsuit against Alaska election officials seeking to block certification of its Senate results if the incumbent, GOP Sen. Dan Sullivan, loses.
