Trump administration seeks Supreme Court order to pause 20,000 California mail ballots
The Justice Department argues that setting aside disputed ballots is necessary to verify citizenship before the midterms, while state officials warn the move is logistically impossible.
By Gabriela Ivanov ·
The Trump administration filed an emergency appeal with the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday, asking the justices to halt the counting of roughly 20,000 mail ballots in California. The White House wants these specific ballots set aside until the federal government can verify the citizenship status of the voters who cast them. The request comes the day before the midterm elections, which will determine control of Congress.
The appeal follows a decision by a divided federal appeals court that rejected the Justice Department's initial request to stop the counting. A district court judge had previously denied the request and warned that the move could disenfranchise citizens. The Justice Department is now seeking a limited injunction from the high court to direct California to separate the disputed ballots while the legal case continues.
Solicitor General D. John Sauer argued that the state must act quickly. He wrote that once California mixes the challenged ballots with lawful ones, there is no way to retrieve them. The federal government maintains that these votes should not be counted until the voters' status is confirmed. The administration has prioritized identifying noncitizen voters this year, a demographic that officials describe as rare.
California officials dispute the reliability of the federal list. They say it likely includes many people who are already U.S. citizens. The state has been mailing ballots to its roughly 23 million registered voters since early October. Hundreds of thousands of these ballots have already been processed. Election officials state that finding and separating the specific challenged ballots now would be logistically impossible.
Lower court judges have sided with the state. U.S. District Judge David O. Carter, who was nominated by President Bill Clinton, warned that segregating ballots would wreak havoc on the midterms and erode trust in the democratic process. He noted that if the executive branch can discount votes based on unproven allegations, the democracy is in danger.
A two-to-one panel of the appeals court upheld Carter's order. One judge appointed by Trump and one judge appointed by Joe Biden voted to keep the ballots in the count. The third judge, also appointed by Trump, dissented and argued that California's refusal to separate the ballots encourages the violation of federal law. The Justice Department has sought to move the case quickly after unsuccessfully asking the appeals court to intervene earlier in the process.
The Supreme Court has granted emergency appeals for the Trump administration several times during his second term. However, the justices previously rejected a similar push by the president to restrict mail ballots ahead of these same midterms.
