Federal Appeals Court Denies Justice Department Bid to Segregate California Ballots

Court Ruling

The federal appeals court has refused a request from the Justice Department to force California to set aside disputed midterm ballots. The 2-1 decision by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals on Friday is another legal defeat for the Trump administration in its attempts to exert federal control over state-run elections. Judges Mark Bennett and Gabriel Sanchez wrote that the administration failed to show that an emergency injunction was needed. They warned that halting the count or separating these ballots could cause immense hardship and threaten the public interest by risking the disenfranchisement of eligible voters and throwing the entire tabulation process into chaos.

The Dispute Over Voters

The federal government claims that California sent ballots to about 20,000 people who might not be U.S. citizens and wants those votes isolated until citizenship status is verified. State officials argue that this list is deeply unreliable and likely contains many legitimate U.S. citizens. A district court judge previously rejected the administration's request, noting there is no practical way to separate specific ballots without causing catastrophic damage to the entire system. Millions of people have already voted in California, and hundreds of thousands of ballots have already been processed. Local election officials point out that once votes are processed, they are completely anonymized and cannot be traced back to the individuals who submitted them.

Broad Legal Fight

This ruling takes place amid a wider legal battle between the federal government and state authorities ahead of Tuesday's midterms. Similar federal scrutiny has emerged in Washington state and Alaska, where the administration issued subpoenas in a spoiler-candidate controversy. Earlier on Friday, a federal judge in Washington ordered the government to share the disputed list of 20,000 names with lawyers for the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights and the UCLA Voting Rights Project so they can assess its impact. Prosecutor Bill Essayli, the top federal official in Los Angeles, has warned that local election officials who process noncitizen ballots could face legal jeopardy. Meanwhile, a coalition of unions including the A.F.L.-C.I.O. and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees filed a challenge to block the Justice Department from demanding that local officials stop counting votes and dropping threats of criminal prosecution.

Context

Elections in the United States are run individually by states and local jurisdictions rather than the federal government, leaving questions of voter eligibility and list maintenance primarily to local officials under state laws and federal statutes like the National Voting Rights Act. Disputes over voter roll accuracy and the mechanics of ballot processing often increase significantly in the final weeks before high-stakes midterm elections as early voting numbers grow.