DOJ asks Supreme Court to intervene in California ballot processing amid sweeping anti-voter crackdown
Select a version of the text written from a presumed ideological perspective. This is not the original text, but a hypothetical version — how someone with that viewpoint might have phrased it. Tapping the current version again will return to the original or select cleaned version.
The Justice Department has rushed to the Supreme Court seeking emergency intervention to block California from counting ballots from thousands of people it claims may be noncitizens, after lower courts rejected the extraordinary demand.
The Department of Justice filed a notice on Monday seeking injunctive relief from the U.S. Supreme Court to force California to set aside and stop processing ballots of individuals the agency labels as "likely" noncitizens. The DOJ claims its list includes about 20,000 voters whose ballots should not be counted until citizenship can be verified, a move critics view as a sweeping attempt to suppress lawful votes on the basis of suspicion rather than proof.
Federal judges, including Judge David Carter and a divided panel of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, previously rejected the DOJ's request. In their Friday decision, Judges Mark Bennett and Gabriel Sanchez wrote that granting the relief could disenfranchise voters and jeopardize the county's election, citing the Purcell principle and the National Voter Registration Act, which restricts changes to election rules close to an election and is meant to protect voter access from last-minute disruption.
A third judge on the panel, Patrick Bumatay, dissented. County officials have indicated that many names on the DOJ's list do not correspond to active registrations, and a UCLA Voting Rights Project analysis found that 42% of the names were absent from California's current voter roll, though some naturalized citizens were included. The DOJ's appeal follows recent actions against California election officials, including subpoenas and warnings of possible criminal prosecution for allowing ineligible voters to cast ballots, intensifying fears of politicized pressure on local election administration. It remains unclear whether the Supreme Court will intervene before Election Day.