WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump’s administration has called on the Supreme Court Monday in its desire to exclude thousands of contested mail-in ballots in California the day before the turning point midterm elections.
The emergency appeal came after a divided appeals court rejected the federal government’s request to throw out some 20,000 ballots from people under suspicion. may not be citizens.
The federal government says those ballots should not be counted until the voters’ status has been verified. California officials say the list is highly unreliable and likely includes many people who are U.S. citizens.
This year, the Republican Trump administration has prioritized identifying non-citizen voters, even though they are rare.
A district court judge forcefully denied the Justice Department’s request and warned that the request could disenfranchise citizens in Tuesday’s midterm elections aimed at determining control of Congress.
The Justice Department has asked the high court for a “limited injunction” that would order California to void the ballots while the case plays out.
“Once California commingles contested ballots with legal ballots, there is no way to recover the contested ballots,” wrote Solicitor General D. John Sauer.
Voting has been underway in California, a predominantly Democratic state, since early October. All of the approximately 23 million registered voters in the state receive a ballot by mail. Hundreds of thousands of ballots have already been processed. California election officials said it would now be logistically impossible to track down and discard the disputed ballots.
California Attorney General Rob Bonta, a Democrat, said the call “reeks of desperation and is yet another attempt to undermine our elections and trample the rule of law.”
Lower courts sided with the state, with a warning from the district judge that ballot separation would “wreak havoc” in the midterm elections and erode confidence in the democratic process.
“If the executive branch can discard votes and threaten ongoing elections because of unproven allegations, then our democracy is in danger,” wrote U.S. District Judge David O. Carter, appointed by Democratic President Bill Clinton.
A 2-1 appeals court panel upheld his order, with one judge appointed by Trump and another appointed by President Joe Biden, a Democrat, voting in favor. The panel’s third judge, also appointed by Trump, argued in a dissenting opinion that California’s refusal to segregate ballots encouraged “violation of federal law.”
The Justice Department sought to move the case forward quickly, ask without success a court of appeal to intervene quickly.
The Trump administration racked up a string of victories in emergency appeals to the Supreme Court during its second term, but the justices previously rejected the president’s request to restrict mail-in voting before the midterms.
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Associated Press writer Sophie Austin in Sacramento contributed to this report.
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