Washington — The Trump administration on Monday asked the Supreme Court to intervene in its effort to force California election workers to set aside mail ballots from thousands of people it claims are not U.S. citizens.
The Justice Department’s request for emergency relief came after a federal appeals court on Friday declined to order California officials to segregate the ballots cast by more than 20,000 people included on a government list of suspected noncitizens.
More than 6 million mail ballots have been returned statewide as of Sunday, according to the California secretary of state’s office. Voting has been underway in California since early October. There are more than 23 million registered voters in the state.
The emergency appeal to the high court came in the fast-moving legal battle unfolding in the run-up to Tuesday’s elections. The Trump administration so far has not been successful in convincing lower courts to require the ballots at issue to be put aside.
But in the request to the Supreme Court, Solicitor General D. John Sauer said the government is seeking a “modest remedy” that will ensure any ballots cast by people who are not American citizens do not “debase or dilute valid votes.”
“Once California commingles the challenged ballots with lawful ones, there is no way to get the challenged ballots back,” he wrote in a filing. “The only way to preserve the district court’s ability to grant relief to the United States after a full merits proceeding, therefore, is to segregate the challenged ballots now.”
The dispute arose after the Justice Department sent letters to California’s secretary of state and the top elections official in Los Angeles County with a list of 20,000 people it claimed were registered to vote but not U.S. citizens, and demanded any ballots returned by them be set aside and not tabulated until their citizenship could be verified.
But the officials have expressed concerns about the accuracy of the list and the potential for eligible voters to be disenfranchised.
The Justice Department sued California and Dean Logan, the Los Angeles County registrar-recorder and county clerk, and sought a court order requiring the ballots to be segregated.
But on Wednesday, U.S. District Judge David Carter rejected the Trump administration’s request for a temporary restraining order blocking election workers from counting ballots from the alleged noncitizens.
“Constitutional rights and our democracy are at stake. The public interest favors their protection,” Carter, appointed by President Bill Clinton, said. “Individuals who have met the requirements of California’s voter registration laws must not be deprived of a core right merely because of unfounded allegations stemming from a procedure rife with uncertainty and errors.”
A three-judge panel on the 9th Circuit divided 2-1 on Friday in denying a Justice Department request to require the ballots to be separated and not counted pending citizenship verification.