Trump Administration Asks US Supreme Court to Isolate Over 20,000 Ballots in California

Emergency appeal to the Supreme Court on the eve of the elections

On Monday, one day before the midterm elections, the administration of President Donald Trump filed an emergency petition with the US Supreme Court, demanding that California authorities separate the ballots of more than 20,000 registered voters suspected by federal authorities of not being US citizens. This was reported by the Anadolu Agency.US Solicitor General D. John Sauer described the requested measure as a 'modest remedy' and emphasized that it 'would not cancel a single vote' but would only allow verification of the status of the suspects. He warned that if California mixes the contested ballots with legitimate ones, it will be impossible to retrieve them; therefore, intervention is necessary before county workers finish processing early votes. Deutsche Welle clarifies that the petition was filed by the Department of Justice.led by former personal attorney of Trump, Todd Blanche, and requests a 'restraining order' mandating the state 'not to mix suspicious illegal ballots with legitimate ones' until the voters' status is verified.

The list and the legal history of the case

The list of more than 20,000 individuals was compiled by the US Department of Homeland Security through cross-checks of databases by the Citizenship and Immigration Services and manual verification by investigators; the records were transmitted to California authorities in mid-October, but the state refused to set the ballots aside. The federal government first filed a lawsuit based on this data in mid-October; however, a district judge rejected the demand, warning that separating the ballots would 'create chaos' in the electoral process and undermine voter confidence. Los Angeles District Court Judge David Carter wrote in October: 'If the executive branch can disqualify votes and threaten ongoing elections based on unproven claims, then our democracy is in danger.' He also noted that 'never before in American history has the federal government, on the eve of an election, attempted to force state and local authorities to abandon their own constitutional electoral procedures.' Meanwhile, Department of Justice attorneys argue that federal law strictly prohibits non-citizens from voting in federal elections and takes precedence over state rules.

Errors in the list and California's position

In response to the lawsuit, California defended the integrity of its elections and stated that the method used by the Trump administration to identify non-citizens likely contains errors. Last week, another federal judge ordered the Department of Justice to share its list with an immigrant rights group and an election oversight organization at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). According to a legal document containing the analysis results, thousands of US citizens on the list appear to have been inexplicably marked as ineligible to vote; Judge Carter noted that individuals recently labeled as non-citizens in other states were repeatedly found to be naturalized US citizens. Deutsche Welle reminds that Trump has for years made baseless claims about election fraud, although numerous investigations show such violations are extremely rare, and in the current election cycle he has focused on the claim of non-citizen voting, which has been repeatedly debunked by studies. It remains unclear whether the Supreme Court will issue a decision in time to affect Tuesday's elections: early voting in California has been underway for several weeks, and hundreds of thousands of ballots have already been processed.

Political context

California is the most populous US state, traditionally votes for Democrats and, according to Deutsche Welle, is not expected to become competitive for Trump's Republicans in these midterm elections. Governor Gavin Newsom, an open critic of the president, warned the administration against interfering in the state's voting. Ahead of Tuesday's election, he announced that election law experts and observers would be deployed to polling places and that a hotline would be launched where voters can report attempts at intimidation or interference at polling stations. Thus, the appeal to the Supreme Court is the latest attempt by the federal side to influence the handling of ballots in the state after refusals by two lower courts, and its practical effect depends on whether the Supreme Court manages to respond before voting concludes.