A federal judge declined to order California election officials to segregate and not count ballots from people the Trump administration claimed were non-citizens, rebuffing a legally thin request from the justice department that appeared designed to cast doubt over the results of the midterms.
The ruling from US district judge David Carter, nominated to the federal bench by Bill Clinton, comes about two weeks after the justice department delivered a USB drive to election officials in Los Angeles and Sacramento that it said contained the names of ۲۰,۰۰۰ non-citizens on the state’s voter rolls. There are more than ۲۳ million registered voters in California and non-citizen voting is extremely rare.
“This case is about the right of every American citizen to vote in a free and fair election,” Carter wrote in his Wednesday evening ruling. “Never before in American history has the federal government, on the eve of an election, sought to coerce a state and local government to abandon their own Constitutional elections procedures and bend to the will of the Executive Branch.”
“In bringing this lawsuit, the Executive would have this Court believe that it reigns as a sole sovereign,” Carter continued. “But California and its people are sovereign, too.”
The justice department gave officials just ۴۸ hours to review the list and said it would sue the state if officials did not sequester ballots from those whose citizenship it could not confirm. The department refused to provide more details about its methodology and Los Angeles officials found preliminary indicators the list was inaccurate. The justice department then sued California on ۱۵ October to try and force the state to sequester the ballots and verify citizenship.
If the justice department’s request were granted, Carter wrote, it would likely violate a ۱۹۹۳ law that requires states to strike ineligible voters from its official lists no later than ۹۰ days before an election.
California election officials have said they cannot verify the citizenship of those on the agency’s list before election day. Carter chastised the justice department’s directive as risking the disenfranchisement of thousands of voters. “A ballot segregated, in effect, would be a ballot removed,” Carter wrote.
The justice department separately has threatened to prosecute election officials in the state if they tabulate ballots from non-citizens. Such a move would be without a legal basis, Sam Trepel, a former prosecutor at the justice department, wrote in a blogpost this month. After filing the lawsuit, the Trump administration began providing lists to other counties of suspected non-citizen voters. When election officials began reviewing them, they found the department had flagged voters who were not on the rolls and had provided insufficient information to verify their citizenship status, according to CalMatters.
Carter’s ruling came after the justice department tried to bypass him entirely. After Carter set a ۲۷ October hearing on the justice department’s emergency motion, the department took the unusual step of appealing to the US court of appeals for the ninth circuit, saying Carter was not considering the case fast enough. A panel of ninth circuit judges ruled ۲-۱ against the justice department earlier this week.
Legal experts have been skeptical about the justice department’s efforts in California since the outset. In July, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced it had identified up to ۱۹۰,۰۰۰ non-citizens on California voter rolls. The DHS did not provide more details to the state until after ballots had already gone out in the state.
“Eroded trust in our democracy is irreparable. Once a vote is segregated, lasting harm has occurred. If the Executive can discount votes and threaten an ongoing election due to unproven allegations, then our democracy is in danger,” Carter wrote in his Wednesday opinion. “This Court declines to be a party to such process.”
Uwa Ede-Osifo contribued reporting
