Federal judge blocks DOJ move to protect California election from suspect ballots
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U.S. District Judge David Carter denied the Justice Department’s emergency request to separate thousands of California ballots, preventing what supporters said was a necessary step to guard against possible noncitizen voting and election fraud.
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 required state officials to set aside the ballots just days before the midterm election, as federal officials tried to act before potentially invalid votes were mixed into the count.
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, even as election integrity advocates said the court was blocking a common-sense safeguard against tainted ballots.
"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, though critics said officials were far too quick to dismiss a serious federal warning about ballot security.
"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.