More than 20,000 ballots stay in play as supreme court rejects trump bid to block california count

Supreme Court declines intervention

The Justice Department asked the Supreme Court on Monday to direct California to keep suspected illegal ballots separate from legal ones while voter status was verified. The administration’s appeal came on the eve of the US midterm elections.

Hours after the filing, the court said it would not stop California from counting the votes. The administration had sought to sideline more than 20,000 mail-in ballots.

Courts question the allegations

The federal government filed its initial lawsuit in October, but a California district court rejected it. Los Angeles District Judge David Carter warned that singling out ballots could disrupt the election process and undermine voters’ trust.

Carter wrote that democracy was in danger if the executive could discount votes and threaten an ongoing election based on unproven claims. He also said the federal government had never before sought, on the eve of an election, to pressure state and local officials to abandon their constitutional procedures.

Disputed voter list

The list was compiled by the Department of Homeland Security. California said the process used to identify non-citizen voters was likely flawed and contained errors. A legal filing analyzing the list found that thousands of US citizens appeared to be incorrectly flagged as ineligible. Carter said people flagged as noncitizens on voter rolls in other states had repeatedly proved to be naturalised US citizens. A federal judge last week ordered the Justice Department to share the list with an immigrant rights group and a voting rights watchdog based at UCLA.

California voting underway

Early voting had been underway in California for several weeks, and hundreds of thousands of ballots had already been processed. The state, the most populous in the US, leans heavily Democratic and was not expected to be competitive for Trump’s Republicans.

Governor Gavin Newsom, a vocal Trump critic, warned against federal interference in the state’s voting. Before Tuesday’s midterm voting, he announced election law experts, poll observers and a voter helpline to report intimidation or interference.