Supreme Court Rejects DOJ’s Last-Ditch Effort to Challenge California Ballots

The U.S. The Supreme Court denied the Department of Justice’s last-minute attempt to intervene in California’s midterm elections. 

On Monday, the DOJ filed a motion requesting that the Supreme Court set aside more than 20,000 ballots they claimed were submitted by non-U.S. citizens until they could be verified. The request was made less than a week after U.S. District Judge David O. Carter rejected the DOJ’s request, finding no legal basis for the demand. 

“The United States’s requested relief is simple only in the abstract,” Carter wrote in the decision. “As the district court found—and we discern no clear error—there is no feasible way to identify and segregate the ballots of specific individuals without potentially catastrophic effects on the entire system.”

Officials countered the Trump administration’s request, saying that the list appeared to be filled with errors. The ballots were largely from Democrat voters. 

Now, the Supreme Court – which has a history of siding with the Trump administration in emergency decisions – has rejected the DOJ’s last-ditch effort to intervene in the Golden State’s election. 

The decision came hours after the DOJ’s filing, and the court did not detail its reasoning. The justices previously rejected Trump’s push to restrict mail ballots around the country in September.

California Secretary of State Shirley Weber commended the Supreme Court for their decision. 

“While this fight is far from over, today’s order means that millions of Californians can focus on the most important task at hand — casting their ballot,” Weber said. 

Despite the loss, the DOJ is standing firm that it will be overseeing Tuesday’s elections, reaffirming its commitment to “election integrity.” They announced they would execute the “largest monitoring effort in history,” deploying approximately 1,000 election monitors in all 50 states. In California, these election monitors will be stationed in Los Angeles, Alameda, Sacramento and San Diego, according to the DOJ.

United States Attorney for the Central District of California Bill Essayli has been working in tandem with the Justice Department in their investigation into non-citizen voters. 28 individuals were charged in early October for alleged voter registration fraud in what was called “Operation Protect the Vote,” aimed at a federal effort to “root out fraud” in California.

Six additional Los Angeles County individuals were charged for allegedly illegally registering to vote and lying on government documents on Monday.

“We renew our request for California to expeditiously work with us to verify the citizenship of those casting ballots in elections,” Essayli stated. “We will continue to arrest and prosecute those who threaten our democratic republic through unlawful vote dilution.”

Mail-in voting began in California in early October, and voting centers opened their doors as early as Oct. 24. Hundreds of thousands of ballots have already been processed for these midterm elections, and California election officials have stated that setting aside ballots at this point would be logistically impossible. 

“Federal and state laws establish clear requirements for voter eligibility, ballot processing, and the protection of voting rights. Those requirements cannot be arbitrarily changed midway through an election,” said Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk Dean C. Logan when the DOJ first began this fight. “With voting already underway, our focus remains on conducting a safe, secure, accurate, and transparent General Election.”

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