High Court declines to pause California votes

The Supreme Court declined to intervene in a dispute over 20,000 mail ballots in California on Monday. The decision keeps the votes cast by individuals the Trump administration flagged as likely noncitizens in the count for Tuesday's midterm elections. The ruling arrives the day before voters choose control of Congress for the final two years of the president's second term.

The administration asked the high court to set the challenged ballots aside until citizenship status could be verified. Court officials in California argued the federal list contained numerous errors. They warned that pausing the votes would effectively disenfranchise legal citizens in a heavily Democratic state. The justices did not provide a detailed explanation for their decision, a common practice for emergency matters.

This is the latest in a series of election-related legal battles decided on the eve of the vote. In September, the same court rejected a nationwide push to restrict mail ballots. That decision occurred even as the justices supported the administration in other emergency appeals. The current case involves a specific subset of voters in California, where voting has been underway since early October.

District Court Judge Trina Thompson examined the data during a prior hearing. She questioned Kenneth Kao, a Justice Department attorney, about the accuracy of the federal list. "Would you agree there’s a high error rate?" Thompson asked. Kao responded, "That’s a fair statement." He added that the department asked for help from registrars to verify the voters.

Bill Essayli, the federal prosecutor leading the Justice Department's Los Angeles office, defended the list at a news conference. He stated he was highly confident the people named were not entitled to vote. "This isn't speculation. This isn't a theory," Essayli said. He later conceded that errors might exist on the list.

California Attorney General Rob Bonta, a Democrat, criticized the federal appeal. He called it an attempt to undermine the elections. "It reeks of desperation," Bonta said. He argued the move trampled on the rule of law. Lower courts had already sided with the state. U.S. District Judge David O. Carter wrote that if the executive branch could discount votes based on unproven allegations, the democracy was in danger.

A two-to-one appeals court panel upheld Carter's order. One judge appointed by President Trump and one appointed by President Biden voted to keep the ballots in the count. The third judge, also appointed by Trump, dissented. She argued that California's refusal to separate the ballots encouraged the violation of federal law. Another federal judge ruled on Monday that last-minute demands from the administration violated the U.S. Constitution.

California election officials stated that finding and setting aside the challenged ballots now would be logistically impossible. Hundreds of thousands of ballots have already been processed. The state mails ballots to all of its roughly 23 million registered voters. The Supreme Court's refusal to pause the count allows the state to proceed with its current processing schedule.