Federal Judge Rejects Justice Department Bid to Segregate California Ballots

A federal judge has declined to order California election officials to segregate and withhold from counting ballots belonging to individuals the Justice Department claimed were non-citizens. US District Judge David Carter issued the ruling on a Wednesday evening, rejecting the emergency motion filed by the federal government.

The legal challenge followed a series of actions by federal authorities, beginning when the Justice Department delivered a USB drive to election officials in Los Angeles and Sacramento containing a list of 20,000 names it alleged were non-citizens on voter rolls. Authorities gave officials a 48-hour window to review the list and sequester the ballots before filing a lawsuit on October 15 to compel compliance. California has more than 23 million registered voters, and non-citizen voting is extremely rare.

Judge Carter criticized the government's directive in his ruling, stating that granting the request would likely violate a 1993 law requiring states to remove ineligible voters no later than 90 days before an election. He noted that a segregated ballot effectively acts as a removed ballot, risking the disenfranchisement of eligible voters. Los Angeles officials also reported preliminary indicators that the provided list was inaccurate, while state officials stated they could not verify the citizenship of the listed individuals before election day.

Prior to the district court ruling, the Justice Department attempted to bypass Judge Carter by appealing to the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit after Carter scheduled a hearing for October 27. A panel of Ninth Circuit judges ruled 2-1 against the department. Following the initial lawsuit, the administration also provided lists of suspected non-citizen voters to other counties, which officials found contained flagged voters not present on the rolls and insufficient verification information.

In his opinion, Judge Carter emphasized the constitutional balance of power between state and federal authorities. He wrote that never before in American history had the federal government sought on the eve of an election to coerce state and local governments into abandoning constitutional election procedures. The Department of Homeland Security had previously announced in July that it identified up to 190,000 non-citizens on California voter rolls, though detailed information was not provided to the state until after ballots had already been distributed.