Photo: Carol M. Highsmith / Library of Congress (public domain, cropped)
A federal judge denied the Justice Department’s emergency request to require California election officials to set aside mail ballots linked to more than 20,000 people the department described as likely noncitizens, rejecting an attempt to change ballot-processing procedures before the November 3 midterm elections.
U.S. District Judge David O. Carter issued the order denying a temporary restraining order on October 28 in the Central District of California. The ruling denied emergency relief rather than finally resolving the federal government’s lawsuit.
The challenged list is not a finding that everyone named is a noncitizen or has voted illegally. Carter said the government had not established that it was likely to succeed on the merits, and warned that the requested changes could prevent eligible citizens from having their votes counted.
What the Justice Department sought
According to the order, the department delivered a list of more than 20,000 individuals to Los Angeles County election officials on October 13. It asked officials to review the list within 48 hours, segregate ballots from people whose citizenship had not been confirmed, withhold unsent ballots and stop signature verification or tabulation until citizenship could be established.
The federal government argued that California’s handling of the ballots interfered with enforcement of a federal criminal prohibition on noncitizen voting. It sought to have ballots set aside while officials checked voters’ citizenship.
State and county officials disputed the reliability of the list and the legal basis for changing procedures while voting was underway. The order said the county’s preliminary review found addresses from across California, not only Los Angeles County, and that officials had not been given the underlying information needed to verify the list within the requested period.
Why the court rejected emergency relief
Carter concluded that the government had not shown that the federal criminal voting statute authorized the requested intervention in state election administration. He also found that the proposed relief would likely conflict with federal voter-protection laws, including the National Voter Registration Act’s restrictions on systematic voter removals close to a federal election.
“The Executive Branch cannot replace the remedy Congress carefully enacted with its own unlawful and unconstitutional solution instead,” Carter wrote.
The order said both federal and California law prohibit noncitizens from voting in federal elections. It noted that federal prosecutors can bring criminal cases involving illegal voting and that California has procedures to cancel registrations when individuals are proven ineligible.
JBizNews Desk | California
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