With Election Day just hours away, a federal judge has stepped in to stop the Trump administration from pressuring California election officials to set aside the ballots of roughly 20,000 voters.
On Monday, Chief U.S. District Judge James Boasberg ordered the administration to stop demanding that California officials segregate the ballots of people on the federal government’s list of suspected noncitizens, the Associated Press reported. The order bars the government from “issuing demands to California elections officials to compel the segregation of ballots, or other deviations from existing state elections procedures, based on voters’ inclusion on the lists of suspected non-citizens.”
“Unconstitutional”
Boasberg found that the administration’s demands violate the U.S. Constitution. According to his ruling, the government’s “attempts to impose new procedures for counting ballots, through threats of criminal prosecution of state election officials, is unconstitutional.”
The case was brought in September by the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights (CHIRLA) and a naturalized U.S. citizen. They challenged the administration’s push to pressure California and other states to check voter rolls against federal databases in search of alleged noncitizen voters, arguing the effort rested on unsupported claims, risked wrongly targeting naturalized citizens, and interfered with the states’ authority to run their own elections.
A list “riddled with errors”
California officials have said the federal demand came far too close to the election, with millions of ballots already cast, and that the list of 20,000 names is riddled with errors. Last week, after Boasberg allowed the plaintiffs’ lawyers to see the list under strict confidentiality, their experts reported that more than 40% of the names could not be found anywhere on California’s current voter file. The Justice Department has defended the list’s accuracy.
Another loss in a growing streak
Monday’s order is the latest in a string of courtroom defeats for the administration’s election-eve push in California:
- Last Wednesday, U.S. District Judge David O. Carter refused to order California to set aside the 20,000 ballots, writing that the request “violates longstanding constitutional principles mandating that states have control over their elections.”
- On Friday, a divided panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected the Justice Department’s emergency bid to force the ballots to be segregated.
- Also on Friday, U.S. District Judge Trina Thompson temporarily barred federal officials from threatening election workers with criminal prosecution and from demanding that they segregate ballots, purge voters or halt ballot processing.
Earlier on Monday, the administration took its fight to the U.S. Supreme Court, filing an emergency appeal in its effort to sideline the disputed California mail ballots.
What it means for voters
For now, California election officials can keep processing ballots under the state’s existing procedures, without federal demands to pull aside the ballots of voters on the government’s list. Voters go to the polls on Tuesday, Nov. 3, in midterm elections that will decide control of the House and Senate.
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