Supreme Court Rejects Administration Bid to Halt California Vote Count

WASHINGTON — The US Supreme Court has rejected a last-minute request by the Trump administration to intervene in California’s midterm election vote count, declining to halt the processing of 20,000 disputed ballots.

The high court announced its decision in a one-line order denying an injunction request presented to Justice Elena Kagan and referred to the full court. The Justice Department had asked the justices to stop California from counting the ballots, alleging they may have been issued to non-US citizens. Two lower courts had already rejected the administration’s request.

The legal showdown unfolds against the backdrop of the US midterm elections, which will determine control of Congress for the final two years of President Donald Trump’s second term. The dispute forms part of a years-long campaign by the Trump administration to combat alleged voter fraud. President Trump has repeatedly claimed that Democrats secure victories by allowing immigrants to vote illegally.

Last month, the Justice Department sent letters to the California secretary of state and the Los Angeles County Registrar demanding that they set aside the ballots of 20,000 registered voters. According to court records, armed officials from the Department of Homeland Security subsequently delivered letters to county officials and employees across California, threatening criminal charges if they failed to sequester the ballots.

The Justice Department maintained that ballots cast by non-citizens could “debase or dilute valid votes.”

California state election officials strongly disputed the federal government’s claims, arguing that the process used to identify alleged non-citizens was inaccurate and that segregating the ballots risked disenfranchising eligible voters. California is the most populous state in the nation, with approximately 23 million people on its voting register. According to the California secretary of state’s office, more than six million mail-in ballots had already been received as of Sunday night.

Federal courts previously weighed in on the administration’s tactics. District Judge David Carter stated that the government’s move in California was indicative of an “ongoing pattern of attempted election interference” by the Trump administration.

Judge Carter added in his rulings that “never before in American history has the federal government, on the eve of an election, sought to coerce a state and local government to abandon their own constitutional elections procedures and bend to the will of the executive branch.”