The Trump administration has issued more than 100 subpoenas in 13 states as it ramps up its search for suspected noncitizen voters.
Published October 29, 2026
A U.S. judge has rejected a Justice Department request to temporarily halt California from counting mail-in ballots from a list of 20,000 noncitizens just six days before the midterm elections.
U.S. District Judge David Carter’s ruling Wednesday comes as President Donald Trump has issued subpoenas in at least 13 states and expanded his search efforts for alleged noncitizen voters.
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“Never before in American history has the federal government, on the eve of an election, attempted to force state and local governments to abandon their own constitutional election procedures and submit to the wishes of the executive branch,” Carter wrote on Wednesday.
The judge, appointed by Democratic President Bill Clinton in 1998, said the Justice Department’s last-minute request to exclude more than 20,000 ballots violated “long-standing constitutional principles that require states to administer elections.”
The Justice Department immediately appealed the decision to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, but did not immediately respond to Reuters’ request for comment.
The Justice Department filed the lawsuit on Oct. 15, an unusual intervention in the voting process weeks before Tuesday’s election. In this vote, voters will choose which party will control Congress and state and local representatives.
President Trump’s efforts escalate
The decision marks the latest setback in efforts to expand the federal government’s role in elections ahead of midterm congressional elections as President Trump’s Republicans seek to maintain majorities in both chambers of Congress.
The Trump administration has issued more than 100 subpoenas requesting the records of tens of thousands of voters in at least 13 states, both Republican and Democratic.
Most of the subpoenas documented by Reuters were issued to state and local election officials within the past three months, although some date back to earlier this year. Many of the cases were previously unreported, revealing that the federal government’s efforts to identify potential noncitizen voters are more extensive than publicly known.
It is illegal for noncitizens to vote in U.S. federal elections. Legal experts say the records could be used to challenge the close interim results, although there is scant evidence of widespread non-referendum voting.
“Seriously flawed process”
Also Wednesday, Democracy Docket, a US media platform that tracks election litigation, reported that the Justice Department’s list of alleged noncitizen voters “appears to have been created using a deeply flawed process” and could disenfranchise American voters beyond California.
The group reports that a government whistleblower revealed in a court filing that voters are being scrutinized in California and across the country as part of the federal investigation into the Illegal Voter Initiative. The whistleblower warned that “the current process intentionally wipes out known U.S. citizens as potential ‘illegal voters.'”
California said the state’s safeguards against noncitizen voters are strong. The department said the Justice Department’s claims rely on “questionable data” and that complying with the Justice Department’s request risks disenfranchising voters. The Democracy Docket reported that in Los Angeles County, one in four voters on the “noncitizen” list was born in the United States.
