The Trump administration asked the Supreme Court on Monday to temporarily block California from counting the mail-in ballots of about 20,000 voters who the Justice Department has suggested may not be U.S. citizens.
The Justice Department’s petition to the Supreme Court was filed three days after the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals rejected the department’s bid to overturn a federal district judge’s ruling that allowed the votes to be counted.
Petitions are filed the day before Election Day. The Supreme Court may act on the petition at any time, but there is no time limit.
Midterm elections will determine which political parties will hold a majority in both houses of Congress.
“In this case, our office has been informed that the United States has identified more than 20,000 individuals who, based on publicly available information at the time the information was received, appear to be registered to vote in California, but who, in the United States’ opinion, are likely not U.S. citizens,” Attorney General D. John Sauer said Monday in a petition to the Supreme Court.
“The United States is likely to prevail on the merits of the appeal,” Sauer said of the lower court’s ruling denying the Justice Department’s request.
“While the district court concluded that the United States lacks Article III standing to bring this action, the United States has suffered a judicially recognized ‘injury to its sovereignty’ due to the ‘violation of law,'” Sauer said in the petition. “Once California confuses contested ballots with legal ballots, there is no way to retrieve contested ballots.”
The Department of Justice filed suit against the state of California in Los Angeles federal district court on October 15th. The complaint sought to prevent state election officials from counting mail-in ballots “from persons who are likely to be non-citizens in the upcoming federal election until the citizenship status of the voters is known.”
The Justice Department previously provided Los Angeles County officials with thumb drives containing the names of voters the department suggested may be non-citizens prohibited by law from voting in federal elections.
Last Wednesday, Judge David Carter rejected the Justice Department’s request to order California officials to preserve the mail-in ballots of people identified as noncitizens on a list created by the Department of Homeland Security and not count the votes until their citizenship is verified.
“This case is about the right of all Americans to vote in free and fair elections,” Carter said in his ruling.
“Never before in American history has the federal government attempted to force state and local governments to abandon their own constitutional election procedures and submit to the will of the executive branch on the eve of an election,” Carter wrote. “By filing this lawsuit, the executive branch will lead this court to believe that the state of California governs as the sole sovereign. But California and its people are also sovereign.”
The Department of Justice subsequently appealed this decision to the Ninth Circuit. The court’s three-judge panel rejected the appeal in a 2-1 decision Friday.
“Granting the relief requested by the United States poses a significant risk of deprivation,” said the majority ruling by Circuit Court Judges Mark Bennett and Gabriel Sanchez. Mr. Bennett was appointed by President Donald Trump, and Mr. Sanchez was appointed by former President Joe Biden.
A federal judge on Sunday rejected a Justice Department lawsuit that sought to prevent Alaska election officials from immediately certifying the results if incumbent Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan somehow loses the state Senate race.
