US District Judge David Carter refused on Wednesday to temporarily stop California counting mail ballots from a list of 20,000 voters the Justice Department alleged were noncitizens. The decision came six days before the country’s midterm elections.
The department had filed its lawsuit on October 15, asking the court to halt the count of those ballots. Carter, who was appointed in 1998 by Democratic President Bill Clinton, rejected that request.
In his ruling, Carter wrote: “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.”
He said the request conflicted with longstanding constitutional principles giving states control over their elections.
The case formed part of a wider Trump administration effort, under an investigation called the Unlawful Voter Initiative, to challenge voter eligibility. The administration issued more than 100 subpoenas seeking records on tens of thousands of voters in at least 13 states.
A government whistleblower said voters were being examined nationwide and warned that the process was knowingly including known US citizens as potentially unlawful voters.
Democracy Docket reported that the Justice Department’s list of alleged noncitizen voters appeared to have been produced through a deeply flawed process. California said the department’s assertions rested on suspect data.
The concern was especially concrete in Los Angeles County, where one in four voters on the noncitizen list were born in the US.
The Justice Department has appealed Carter’s ruling to the Ninth US Circuit Court of Appeals.
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