On the eve of the US midterm elections, the Trump administration made a last‑ditch effort to block over 20,000 mail‑in ballots in California, alleging that non‑citizens were attempting to vote.
The Justice Department, now headed by former Trump attorney Todd Blanche, said it possessed a list allegedly containing names of non‑US citizens on California’s voter rolls.
The administration first filed suit in mid‑October, but a California district court rejected the case.
On Monday, the DOJ sought a limited injunction ordering California to stop mixing suspected illegal ballots with valid ones while voter eligibility was verified.
Within hours of the appeal, the Supreme Court announced it would not intervene, allowing California to continue counting the contested ballots.
When the original lawsuit was brought in early October, Los Angeles District Judge David Carter warned that singling out ballots could cause chaos and erode public confidence in the electoral process.
Carter added, “If the executive can discount votes and threaten an ongoing election based on unproven claims, then our democracy is in danger,” as he dismissed the initial suit.
Early voting has been underway in California for weeks, with hundreds of thousands of ballots already processed.
Battle for US midterm elections heats up
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Analysis shows thousands of eligible voters on ballot blacklist
The list was compiled by the Department of Homeland Security. In its legal response, California argued that the Trump administration’s method for identifying non‑citizen voters was flawed and riddled with errors.
A federal judge recently ordered the DOJ to share the list with an immigrant‑rights organization and a voting‑rights watchdog at UCLA. Subsequent legal filings revealed that thousands of U.S. citizens were incorrectly flagged as ineligible. Judge Carter noted that similar cases in other states had repeatedly shown that people marked as non‑citizens later proved to be naturalized citizens.
Trump’s fixation on voter fraud
Trump has long promoted baseless claims of election fraud, even though numerous investigations show such misconduct is extremely rare. In the current midterm cycle, he has intensified allegations that non‑citizens are voting, despite consistent debunking by researchers and official audits.
Never before, Judge Carter wrote in October, “has the federal government, on the eve of an election, sought to coerce a state and local government to abandon their own constitutional election procedures and bend to the will of the executive branch.”
California, the nation’s most populous state, leans strongly Democratic and is not considered a battleground for Republicans in the midterms.
Governor Gavin Newsom, a vocal Trump critic, has warned against any interference in the state’s voting process. Ahead of Election Day, he announced the deployment of election‑law experts, poll observers, and a hotline for voters to report intimidation or irregularities.
What could a Democrat win mean for Trump’s presidency?
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