The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday evening denied a Department of Justice request to halt the processing of thousands of California ballots, acting just hours before Election Day. California election officials will count all ballots as submitted, rejecting the federal government's attempt to segregate votes from individuals it identified as potentially ineligible.
The Justice Department had sought an injunction to prevent counting ballots from approximately 20,000 individuals on California's voter roll it designated as "likely" noncitizens, arguing their votes should be segregated until their citizenship status could be verified.
The decision followed rejections from U.S. District Judge David Carter, a Clinton appointee, and a divided panel of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. Carter called the Justice Department's actions "a broad, ongoing pattern of attempted election interference by federal officials" when he denied the request last week.
The 9th Circuit panel, with judges Mark Bennett, a Trump appointee, and Gabriel Sanchez, a Biden appointee, rejected the Justice Department's emergency request on Friday. Granting relief carried a "material risk" of disenfranchisement and could jeopardize Los Angeles County's election, they wrote.
The court cited the Purcell principle, a legal precedent discouraging election rule changes on the eve of voting. It also invoked the Constitution, which grants states authority over elections, and the National Voter Registration Act, which bars systematic removal of ineligible voters within 90 days of a federal election.
Judge Patrick Bumatay, also a Trump appointee on the panel, dissented.
California and Los Angeles County officials challenged the accuracy of the Justice Department's list and said creating a new system to segregate ballots while voting was underway was infeasible.
County election officials found many individuals on the list did not have active voter registrations and were not mailed ballots, suggesting the actual number of disputed ballots was far smaller than 20,000.
Data scientists at UCLA's Voting Rights Project, granted court-ordered access to the Justice Department's list, found 42 percent of the names did not appear on California's current voter roll. Their analysis also identified naturalized citizens among those the department had flagged.
The Supreme Court's refusal to intervene caps weeks of escalating conflict between the Justice Department and California election officials. The department previously sent subpoenas to state officials and reminded them of potential criminal prosecution for allowing ineligible voters to cast ballots.
