Trump team asks Supreme Court to pause 20,000 California votes

The Trump administration filed an emergency appeal with the Supreme Court on Monday, one day before midterm elections, seeking to remove approximately 20,000 disputed mail ballots from California’s count. The federal government argues that these votes should not be tallied until the citizenship status of the voters is confirmed.

Solicitor General D. John Sauer wrote that once California mixes the challenged ballots with lawful ones, there is no way to retrieve them. The Justice Department requested a limited injunction to direct the state to set these votes aside while the legal case proceeds.

California officials dispute the reliability of the list provided by the federal government. They state that the data likely includes many people who are already U.S. citizens. State election leaders have noted that finding and isolating the specific ballots now would be logistically impossible because voting has been underway since early October. Hundreds of thousands of ballots have already been processed across the state.

The request follows a divided decision from a federal appeals court. A panel of three judges rejected the administration's bid to intervene. Two judges voted to uphold a lower court order that kept the ballots in the count. One judge appointed by President Trump and one judge appointed by President Joe Biden voted in favor of California. The third judge, also a Trump appointee, dissented. He argued that California’s refusal to separate the votes encourages a violation of federal law.

U.S. District Judge David O. Carter, who was nominated by President Bill Clinton, initially denied the Justice Department’s request. Carter warned that the demand could disenfranchise citizens in Tuesday’s election. He stated that if the executive branch can discount votes based on unproven allegations, the democracy is in danger. He also cautioned that segregating ballots would wreak havoc on the midterm process.

The Trump administration has made identifying noncitizen voters a priority this year, even though such voters are rare. The federal team has pursued a series of emergency appeals in the Supreme Court during this second term. However, the justices previously rejected a similar push to restrict mail ballots ahead of these midterms.