A federal judge on Wednesday rejected the Justice Department’s unprecedented, highly controversial attempt to intervene in California’s midterm elections.
Earlier this month, the DOJ sued the Democrat-led state over claims that more than 20,000 of its registered voters could be noncitizens. The agency then asked a judge to block the state from counting these voters’ mail-in ballots until it could verify their citizenship.
District Judge David O. Carter declined to grant that order, noting that it threatened to disenfranchise thousands of voters.
“This request violates longstanding constitutional principles mandating that states have control over their elections,” Carter wrote. “If Plaintiff’s last-minute request for relief were granted, either party could create chaos for their own political purposes to disrupt the election process. Over 20,000 registered Californians would potentially lose the right that generations of Americans have fought to preserve.”
The decision deals a blow to the Trump administration’s extraordinary efforts to expand its role in the midterm elections as Republicans face the prospect of losing both the House and Senate in November. The DOJ request is one of several contentious moves by the administration to challenge states’ authority to run their own elections. It also appears to clash with a federal law that bans removing voters from registration lists within 90 days of an election.
In arguments against the order, California’s attorneys stressed that the state has protections against noncitizen voting. They also cast doubt on the data the administration was using to identify noncitizens, and emphasized that its request could disenfranchise people.
“I just want to make sure the stakes are clear: that what we’re talking about is stripping voting rights from thousands of people until proven otherwise,” Anne Bellows, a California deputy attorney general, said Tuesday.
DOJ attorneys, meanwhile, claimed these ballots needed to be sequestered so possible noncitizen votes wouldn’t dilute other voters’ ballots. That’s despite a federal law that bars noncitizens from voting in federal elections and data showing these violations are infrequent.
“It means something to be a United States citizen. It means something to participate in an election,” federal prosecutor Bill Essayli argued. “We want to make sure those interests are safeguarded.”
The DOJ’s actions are just the latest to elevate President Donald Trump’s longstanding, and unfounded, claims about voter fraud and noncitizen participation in elections.
The administration has also asked Washington State to set aside ballots from people it claims could be noncitizens. Additionally, the DOJ has sued to block the certification of Alaska’s Senate results if Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska) loses by a narrow margin, claiming that the result could be due to voter confusion regarding a second Dan Sullivan on the ballot.
The administration has signaled that it could appeal Wednesday’s decision. The Justice Department had previously asked the 9th Circuit Court to issue an expedited decision, but the panel ruled Monday that it lacked jurisdiction because the lower court had not yet ruled.