The US Supreme Court on Monday rejected the Trump administration’s request to set aside 20,000 California ballots that it alleged were cast by non-citizens, on the eve of the midterm elections. The order, which was one line long, denied the government’s request for an injunction and left lower court rulings in place, according to the BBC.
The justice department had asked for the ballots to be set aside, saying they may have been issued to non-US citizens, according to allAfrica, which reprinted the report from Capital FM. Two lower courts had already rejected the request. On Friday, a federal appeals court also declined the government’s request to segregate the ballots, according to allAfrica.
The Supreme Court did not explain its reasoning, as is common in emergency decisions, according to the Guardian.
Last week, district judge David Carter said the government’s move in California was indicative of an "ongoing pattern of attempted election interference," according to allAfrica.
The justice department sent letters last month to the California secretary of state and the Los Angeles County Registrar demanding that the ballots be set aside. About a week later, armed Department of Homeland Security officials delivered letters threatening criminal charges if the ballots were not sequestered, according to the reporting summarised here. California election officials said the government’s list of names was riddled with inaccuracies. They warned that eligible voters could be disenfranchised and that segregating ballots during voting was unfeasible.
California’s secretary of state’s office said more than six million mail-in ballots had been received as of Sunday night, according to the BBC.
The midterm elections will determine which party controls Congress for the last two years of Trump’s second term. Trump has repeatedly claimed that Democrats steal elections by allowing illegal immigrant voting, though research shows such fraud is extremely rare.
The sources do not say how many of the 20,000 flagged voters are non-citizens. The government’s claims are unverified, and California officials dispute the accuracy of the list. The sources also do not say how the ruling affects the vote count timeline or the remaining ballots. No response from the Trump administration or the justice department to the ruling was included in the reporting.
The midterm elections take place on Tuesday, and the ballot count is proceeding in California. The underlying dispute over the flagged ballots may continue in lower courts, although the sources do not say so either way. This article relies on the BBC, the Guardian and allAfrica, and no court document beyond the quoted one-line order was reviewed.
Sources
This article was written with AI assistance from the published reporting listed above. It is part of the World Brief daily news podcast.