The Supreme Court on Monday rejected the Trump administration’s emergency bid to force California to segregate and not count about 20,000 Us election ballots that the Justice Department said came from non-citizens. The ruling leaves California election officials to keep handling the disputed ballots after a Friday order had already blocked threats against them.
California ballot review
The dispute began in mid-October, when the DoJ delivered a USB drive to Los Angeles and Sacramento election officials with names it said matched non-citizens on California voter rolls. The department gave officials 48 hours to review the list and threatened to sue if the ballots were not sequestered until the listed people could verify their citizenship.
California officials refused to sequester the ballots. Dean Logan said, “The Department of Justice has not provided the underlying evidence, source, or methodology supporting its assertions that individuals identified in its records are ineligible to vote.”
Friday order in California
A federal judge on Friday blocked the government from threatening California election officials who counted ballots from people on the list. The Supreme Court then acted on Monday without explanation, and there were no noted dissents from the justices.
That sequence matters to election workers in Los Angeles and Sacramento because it left the state’s counting process in place while the emergency federal effort was rejected. The Justice Department’s claim rested on 20,000 names, but the record described in the dispute did not include the underlying evidence, source, or methodology California asked to see.
Newsom and Bonta
Gavin Newsom praised the ruling, saying, “After repeatedly losing in the lower courts, the highest court in the land firmly slapped down the Trump DoJ’s baseless attack on California’s electoral process – not even entertaining it.” Rob Bonta said, “This latest decision should put an end to the administration’s attempt to disrupt California’s elections through emergency court orders. But our work is not over.”
The practical question left by the case is whether any of the 20,000 disputed ballots were actually cast by ineligible voters. Omar Muñoz, who was arrested in a related case, said, “It was staged and I’m the patsy … They wanted to make a scene.”
