Supreme Court blocks Trump administration's bid to target California ballots with anti-voter zeal
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The U.S. Supreme Court turned away an emergency request from the Trump administration to isolate up to 20,000 mail-in ballots in California, leaving the state's voting process intact despite the administration's unsupported claims about non-citizen voting.
The Supreme Court on Monday denied an emergency petition from the Trump administration seeking to separate as many as 20,000 mail-in ballots in California that federal officials alleged might have been cast by non-citizens. The brief order gave no explanation and was issued without first asking California to respond, breaking with the court's usual practice and underscoring the administration's aggressive push to inject federal power into state elections.
California election officials have opposed the Justice Department's intervention, noting that state law already prohibits non-citizens from voting and questioning the accuracy of the federal data. The administration has warned state officials of possible prosecution for allowing non-citizens to vote, a threat a federal judge recently ordered the Justice Department to stop making.
While elections are administered by local authorities, the administration argues that a federal statute barring non-citizen voting gives it grounds to intervene. The claim that millions of non-citizens vote in U.S. elections has been repeated again and again without supporting evidence, and experts say such cases are rare.
Previous attempts to verify non-citizen registrations have fallen apart; for example, Nevada officials confirmed that individuals identified as non-citizens on a federal list were, in fact, citizens. In California, thousands of mail-in ballots have already been processed, and the verification process discards voter identification details after confirming signatures, making retroactive identification of alleged non-citizen votes impractical.
The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals also rejected the administration's claim, finding no congressional intent for the federal non-citizen voting ban to override state election laws.