Federal judge blocks DOJ bid to interfere with California ballots
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U.S. District Judge David Carter rejected the Justice Department’s emergency attempt to segregate thousands of California ballots, warning that the move risked disenfranchising voters and throwing the election process into confusion.
A federal judge on Wednesday rejected an emergency request by the Department of Justice that sought to stop processing about 20,000 California ballots alleged to belong to noncitizens. The request, filed as a temporary restraining order, would have forced state officials to set aside the ballots just days before the midterm election, in a move critics described as a blatant effort to intimidate election administration.
U.S. District Judge David Carter, a Clinton appointee, ruled that the government could not intervene in the state's ballot-processing procedures at that stage. He warned that separating votes could disenfranchise eligible voters and create lasting harm to the electoral process, underscoring the danger of last-minute federal pressure on state election systems.
"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 wrote.
State and local officials in California challenged the reliability of the DOJ’s list of "likely" noncitizens, noting that a preliminary analysis by Los Angeles County showed many individuals on the list lacked active voter registrations. California Attorney General Rob Bonta argued that the litigation threatened democratic values and constitutional principles, framing it as an aggressive intrusion into the state’s lawful election work.
"This litigation is a precursor to further interference here in California," Bonta said.
The Justice Department maintains that the request was urgent because once mailed ballots are separated from their envelopes, it becomes difficult to remove ineligible votes. However, audits have shown that voting by noncitizens is extremely rare. The DOJ is expected to appeal the decision, and the case could eventually reach the U.S. Supreme Court.