Supreme Court Rejects Trump Bid to Set Aside California Ballots on Election Eve
Hours before the polls open, the justices declined the Justice Department's emergency request to force California to segregate ballots from about 20,000 voters the administration alleges may not be citizens. No justice publicly dissented.
The Supreme Court on Monday refused to order California to set aside ballots cast by about 20,000 registered voters the Trump administration alleges may not be U.S. citizens, rejecting the Justice Department's emergency request on the eve of the November 3 midterm elections. The court declined to intervene, none of the justices publicly dissented, and California's existing ballot procedures stay in place as voters decide races that will help determine control of Congress.
The ruling leaves intact two lower-court decisions against the administration. U.S. District Judge David Carter on October 28 rejected the Justice Department's attempt to keep the ballots from being counted until the voters' citizenship could be verified, and the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, in a 2-1 decision, said forcing California to use the federal list could bar valid votes from being cast and jeopardize the Los Angeles County election. The Justice Department sued California in October under the federal law, 18 U.S.C. 611, that makes it a crime for noncitizens to vote in federal contests.
California's answer, throughout, has been that it already has safeguards to protect election integrity - and that the process the administration used to create its own list of questionable voters is, in the state's word, highly suspect. For Pensacola voters the direct effect is none: Florida's ballot handling is untouched by a California ruling. The local read is the shape of Election Day itself - the nation's highest court, asked at the last hour to change how one state's ballots are counted, chose not to, and the counting rules in place on Monday night are the rules the results will be counted under on Tuesday.
