The court denied the Trump administration’s emergency request on 2 November after lower courts rejected its bid. The administration alleges the mail ballots came from noncitizens.
The US Supreme Court rejected the Trump administration’s request to force California to set aside 20,000 mail ballots from people the administration alleges are not citizens, France 24 said in an account with Reuters, AP and AFP. The request sought emergency relief to separate the ballots for citizenship verification.
The decision denied the administration’s request for an emergency order forcing California to separate the ballots for citizenship checks. It concerned that immediate relief, not a determination of the voters’ citizenship.
The court’s denial did not establish whether the voters were citizens. It gave no explanation for the decision, and no dissents were noted.
In mid-October, the administration demanded that California’s secretary of state and Los Angeles County election officials withhold the ballots from counting until the voters’ citizenship could be verified. California refused, and the administration sued, CalMatters said.
US District Judge David O. Carter ruled the previous week that the administration’s efforts were likely unconstitutional. A panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals then rejected the administration’s claims before it went to the Supreme Court.
Several county officials said spot checks found inaccuracies in the federal list. The UCLA Voting Rights Project told a federal court that its data scientists could not find 42% of the names in California’s current voter file and that thousands of US citizens appeared to have been flagged as ineligible.
The Democrat says Republican Michael Whatley acknowledged the result, confirming the seat change.
Federal prosecutors also demanded that county election officials separate ballots on the list or face possible criminal charges, and served some officials with grand jury subpoenas. In a separate union-backed challenge, US District Judge Trina L. Thompson barred the administration from threatening or pressuring officials to withhold or separate ballots and from criminally charging workers based on claims of ineligible voters.
Acting Deputy Attorney General Trent McCotter said California had refused to cooperate with the federal government against noncitizen voting. He said the administration would continue pursuing available legal avenues.
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