Trump team seeks pause on 20,000 California ballots

The Trump administration asked the Supreme Court on Monday to pause the counting of approximately 20,000 mail-in ballots in California. The request came one day before the midterm election that will determine control of Congress. The government wants the state to set these specific votes aside while it verifies the citizenship status of the voters who cast them.

A divided appeals court panel rejected the federal government's initial bid to remove the ballots from the count. The panel consisted of two judges appointed by President Donald Trump and one appointed by President Joe Biden. The majority voted to keep the ballots in play. One judge in the dissenting opinion argued that California’s refusal to separate the votes encouraged a violation of federal law.

The Justice Department argues that mixing the disputed ballots with valid ones makes it impossible to retrieve them later. Solicitor General D. John Sauer wrote that California commingled the challenged ballots with lawful ones. He requested a limited injunction to direct the state to hold the 20,000 votes until the legal case concludes.

California officials say the federal list of suspected noncitizens is highly unreliable. They argue the list likely contains many people who are already U.S. citizens. State election leaders stated that finding and removing these ballots now would be logistically impossible because hundreds of thousands of votes have already been processed.

Voting in California began in early October. The state mails ballots to all of its roughly 23 million registered voters. California Attorney General Rob Bonta called the Supreme Court appeal desperate. He said the move attempts to undermine the election and trample on the rule of law.

U.S. District Judge David O. Carter originally denied the Justice Department's request. Carter, who was nominated by President Bill Clinton, warned that segregating the ballots would wreak havoc on the election process. He noted that allowing the executive branch to discount votes based on unproven allegations puts democracy in danger.

The administration has prioritized identifying noncitizen voters this year. Noncitizen voting is rare, but the government has pushed for strict verification. The Supreme Court has granted emergency appeals for the president in his second term. However, the justices previously rejected a different push to restrict mail ballots ahead of these midterms.