The US Supreme Court on Monday rejected the Trump administration’s emergency request to set aside just over 20,000 California ballots associated with voters it suspects may not be US citizens. The one-sentence order came a day before the midterm elections and did not explain the court’s reasoning.
The Justice Department had asked the justices to prevent the ballots from being mixed with other ballots while the issue was litigated. The administration argued they should not be counted until the voters’ citizenship could be verified. Lower courts had already rejected the request, prompting the federal government to appeal to the Supreme Court.
A federal judge in Los Angeles, David O. Carter, ruled last Wednesday that the administration had not provided sufficient grounds to set the ballots aside. He said the requested intervention could violate federal law, disrupt the election and disenfranchise eligible voters. The Justice Department challenged that ruling.
The dispute centers on a list of roughly 20,000 names flagged by the administration. A University of California, Los Angeles, analysis submitted in the case found that 42% of those names did not appear in California’s current voter registration records. US Attorney Bill Essayli questioned the analysis and called for the ballots to be kept separate before they were removed from their envelopes and mixed with others.
The California case is part of a broader federal effort to investigate suspected noncitizen voting. The recovered report says experts consider noncitizen voting in the United States extremely rare. It also notes that federal authorities announced charges against 63 people nationwide on Monday over alleged voting by people who were not eligible.
Sources: El País Portada.