Federal judge rejects DOJ bid to segregate California ballots over citizenship

DOJ gave 48-hour deadline over 20,000-name list before suing California

U.S. District Judge David Carter declined on Wednesday evening to order California election officials to segregate ballots from people the Trump administration says are non-citizens, turning away a justice department request that state officials set aside ballots tied to a list of 20,000 names. California has more than 23 million registered voters, and non-citizen voting is extremely rare. The ruling came from a judge nominated to the federal bench by Bill Clinton.

In his Wednesday evening ruling, Carter said the case concerned voting rights. “This case is about the right of every American citizen to vote in a free and fair election,” he wrote. “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 also addressed the department’s claim about the scope of its own authority. “In bringing this lawsuit, the Executive would have this Court believe that it reigns as a sole sovereign,” Carter continued. “But California and its people are sovereign, too.”

The ruling came about two weeks after the justice department delivered a USB drive to election officials in Los Angeles and Sacramento that it said contained the names of 20,000 non-citizens on the state’s voter rolls. The department gave officials 48 hours to review the list and said it would sue the state if they did not sequester ballots from those whose citizenship it could not confirm.

The department then sued California on 15 October to try to force the state to sequester the ballots and verify citizenship. It refused to provide more details about its methodology, and Los Angeles officials found preliminary indicators that the list was inaccurate.

After filing the lawsuit, the Trump administration began providing lists to other counties of suspected non-citizen voters. When election officials began reviewing them, they found the department had flagged voters who were not on the rolls and had provided insufficient information to verify their citizenship status, according to CalMatters.

A broader federal claim had been made months earlier. In July, the Department of Homeland Security announced it had identified up to 190,000 non-citizens on California voter rolls. DHS did not provide more details to the state until after ballots had already gone out in the state.

Carter’s ruling came after the justice department tried to bypass him. After Carter set a 27 October hearing on the department’s emergency motion, the department appealed to the US court of appeals for the ninth circuit, saying Carter was not considering the case fast enough. A panel of ninth circuit judges ruled 2-1 against the justice department earlier this week.

The justice department separately threatened to prosecute California election officials if they tabulate ballots from non-citizens. Sam Trepel, a former prosecutor at the justice department, wrote in a blog post this month that such a move would be without a legal basis.

The Guardian reported that legal experts have been skeptical about the justice department’s efforts in California since the outset. The outlet described the department’s request as one that “appeared designed to cast doubt over the results of the midterms.” Carter’s ruling declined the department’s bid for an order compelling state officials to sequester ballots and verify citizenship, after a ninth circuit panel had rejected the department’s appeal earlier in the week.