The Justice Department's emergency application seeks an order barring California from commingling approximately 20,000 questioned mail-in ballots with verified votes until their citizenship status is reviewed. This filing directly follows an appeals court loss and a district court rejection from U.S. District Judge David O. Carter, who cautioned that segregating ballots based on unproven claims would disrupt the election and risk disenfranchising lawful voters. California has been actively conducting its universal mail-in election since early October and has already processed hundreds of thousands of votes. The high court's imminent decision arrives as voting operations are already underway…
Key points
Federal officials are attempting to pause the counting of thousands of ballots by challen…: Federal officials are attempting to pause the counting of thousands of ballots by challenging voters' citizenship statuses right before the election.
State officials and lower court rulings have resisted the federal effort to avoid disrupt…: State officials and lower court rulings have resisted the federal effort to avoid disrupting an active mail-in voting process.
The outcome now rests with the Supreme Court as voting continues uninterrupted throughout…: The outcome now rests with the Supreme Court as voting continues uninterrupted throughout California.
Sources checked by our analysis pipeline: 1
The Trump administration has asked the US
Supreme Court to intervene in a dispute over approximately 20,000 mail ballots in California, arguing that votes cast by people suspected of not being US citizens should be kept aside until their eligibility can be verified.
The emergency appeal was filed on Monday, a day before the midterm elections, AP reported.
It followed an appeals court decision rejecting the administration's request to set aside the ballots, which belong to voters whose citizenship status the federal government has questioned.
The Justice Department has argued that California should prevent the disputed ballots from being counted until officials establish whether the voters are eligible. State authorities have challenged the reliability of the federal government's list, saying it is likely to include many US citizens.
The dispute centres on the administration's efforts to identify suspected noncitizen voters, even though such cases are rare. The Justice Department has asked the Supreme Court for a limited injunction directing California to stop mixing the disputed ballots with those cast by eligible voters while the legal proceedings continue.
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