Supreme Court Sides With California Ballots

The Supreme Court rejected the Trump administration’s request to pause counting for 20,000 mail ballots in California on Monday. The decision comes one day before the midterm elections, which will determine control of Congress for the final two years of President Donald Trump’s second term. The high court refused to intervene in the dispute over voter rolls that the Republican administration flagged as potentially containing noncitizens.

The administration asked the justices to set aside the challenged ballots until citizenship status could be verified. California officials argued that the list contained errors and that segregating the votes would effectively disenfranchise legal voters. The high court did not provide a written explanation for its decision, a common practice in emergency docket matters.

This ruling marks the latest in a series of election-related legal battles decided on the day before the vote. Lower courts have already sided with California in this specific case. A district court judge previously denied the Justice Department’s request, warning that the demand could disenfranchise citizens on Tuesday. A federal appeals court panel also upheld the district judge’s order. Two judges voted to keep the ballots in the count, while a third judge dissented, arguing that California’s refusal to separate the votes encouraged the violation of federal law.

The Justice Department has prioritized identifying noncitizen voters this year. The department admits the list is not entirely reliable. During a hearing, District Court Judge Trina Thompson questioned Justice Department attorney Kenneth Kao about reports of widespread inaccuracies in the data. Thompson asked if the government agreed there was a high error rate. Kao responded that it was a fair statement and said the department asked for the registrars’ aid in verifying the voters.

Bill Essayli, the federal prosecutor for the Justice Department’s Los Angeles office, expressed high confidence that the people on the list were not entitled to vote. Essayli stated at a news conference that the situation was not speculation or a theory. He later conceded that errors may exist on the list. The administration maintained that segregating the ballots was a modest request that would still allow legal votes to be counted eventually.

In a related ruling on Monday, Chief Judge James Boasberg of a federal court found that the administration’s last-minute demands of California election officials violated the U.S. Constitution. Boasberg wrote that the Executive Branch likely violated the Elections Clause, which commits authority over election rules to the states and Congress alone.

California has been processing mail ballots since early October. The state mails ballots to all of its roughly 23 million registered voters. Hundreds of thousands of ballots have already been processed. California election officials stated that finding and setting aside the challenged ballots now would be logistically impossible.

California Attorney General Rob Bonta criticized the appeal, saying it reeks of desperation and is an attempt to undermine elections and trample on the rule of law. U.S. District Judge David O. Carter, who was nominated by President Bill Clinton, warned that segregating ballots would wreak havoc on the midterm elections and erode trust in the democratic process. Carter wrote that if the Executive can discount votes based on unproven allegations, the democracy is in danger.

The Supreme Court previously rejected Trump’s push to restrict mail ballots around the country in September. The justices have sided with his administration in other emergency appeals but allowed California to proceed with its current mail-in voting process. The administration has faced a string of losses in court in its push to identify noncitizen voters, with critics noting the department waited until weeks before the election to make its demands.