DHS declined to explain its 190,832 noncitizen estimate
U.S. District Judge David Carter of the Central District of California, ruling Wednesday on the Justice Department’s emergency request to segregate ballots from more than 20,000 California registered voters identified as “likely” noncitizens, said the department had not won any of the 26 decided cases in its broader effort to obtain states’ voter-registration records.
Carter separately questioned the department’s demands that states act on its lists of alleged noncitizens registered to vote, pointing to its effort in Nevada, where it initially claimed there were nearly 16,000 registered noncitizens, a figure it reduced to a subset of 185 selected by the department — all of whom Nevada said were U.S. citizens.
The Department of Homeland Security claimed in July that as many as 190,832 noncitizens might be registered to vote in California. The state asked the federal government to explain the methodology used to produce that number, but DHS officials declined to answer.
Carter warned that granting the request would “wreak havoc” on the midterm elections and threaten Americans’ right to vote, and ruled that the effort to exclude the ballots “violates longstanding constitutional principles mandating that states have control over their 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,” Carter 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,” he said.
“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.”
“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,” Carter said.
The fight over the mail-in ballots goes back to last year, when the Trump administration sought 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.
On Oct. 13 — nearly two weeks after Los Angeles County had begun mailing ballots to registered voters — the Justice Department provided the county with a list of more than 20,000 registered voters it identified as “likely” noncitizens and gave officials 48 hours to determine whether any were citizens and 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, and argued that complying with the department’s demands would violate state laws and be impractical.
Shortly after the deadline expired on Oct. 15, the Justice Department sued California, alleging that the state’s mailing and counting of ballots from suspected noncitizens violated the Constitution’s Supremacy Clause by interfering with federal law prohibiting noncitizens from voting. The department then filed an emergency application for a temporary restraining order amid the litigation.
Carter identified an alternative to segregating the ballots. “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,” he said.
Federal lawyers swiftly filed an appeal after the ruling.