Supreme court rules against Trump over bid to force California to set aside ballots
The Supreme Court on Monday ruled against the Trump administration's attempts to force California election officials to segregate ballots from people the Justice Department claims are non-citizens.
The decision follows several lower courts siding with California officials, who argued the federal government was seeking to interfere in state elections. The legal battle began when the Justice Department delivered a USB drive to Los Angeles and Sacramento election officials in mid-October with names of 20,000 alleged non-citizens on the state's voter rolls, giving officials only 48 hours to review the list and threatening lawsuits if ballots weren't sequestered.
Evidence Disputed
The Justice Department's claims faced immediate pushback from state officials and voting rights groups, who questioned how the agency compiled the list and accused the Trump administration of attempting to cast doubt over midterm elections. The department refused to provide details on its methodology, and election officials found numerous inaccuracies in the list.
The Department of Justice has not provided the underlying evidence, source, or methodology supporting its assertions that individuals identified in its records are ineligible to vote.
Escalating Conflict
The Trump administration has escalated its efforts, threatening to prosecute election officials if they process allegedly ineligible ballots, a move experts say lacks legal basis. The administration has also opened a criminal investigation in California and subpoenaed election officials. US District Judge David Carter previously rejected the administration's request, calling it unusual and extreme.
Carter wrote that "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." The administration's demands are part of a broader effort to assert greater federal oversight of elections and push claims of non-citizen voting, which experts say is extremely rare.
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