A federal judge on Monday ordered the U.S. Department of Justice to stop demanding that California election officials set aside ballots cast by roughly 20,000 people the department suspects may be noncitizens, the Washington Examiner reported. Chief U.S. District Judge James Boasberg, sitting in Washington, D.C., found that the administration likely exceeded its constitutional authority, according to the Examiner.
The ruling lands one day before the midterm elections and marks the second time a federal judge has intervened to block the Justice Department's push to pressure state election officials. U.S. District Judge David Carter last week told the DOJ to stop threatening California election workers, stating that "this court believes that it would be wise that any threats to state and county election employees cease immediately." Carter has not yet issued a written ruling, but the DOJ took the unusual step of appealing his case to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals before he could. The 9th Circuit twice rejected the appeal, leading the department to make an emergency request to the U.S. Supreme Court.
That Supreme Court request was denied within hours, according to multiple outlets covering the story. The high court declined to intervene in the dispute over the 20,000 mail ballots, leaving Boasberg's order in place as Californians head to the polls.
The lawsuit was filed in September by the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights and a naturalized U.S. citizen, according to Democracy Docket. The plaintiffs argued that the administration's campaign to compare state voter rolls against federal databases was based on unsupported claims of noncitizen voting, risked wrongly targeting naturalized citizens, and unlawfully interfered with California's authority to administer its own elections. Boasberg, an appointee of former President Barack Obama, sided with the challengers on Monday, finding that the DOJ likely overstepped its constitutional bounds.
The DOJ has separately called for sanctions over a California voter rolls analysis, according to coverage of the case, and has been pressing the same demand in other states. The ruling does not resolve the underlying question of whether the roughly 20,000 people flagged by the department are in fact noncitizens registered to vote. It prevents California officials from being compelled to treat their ballots differently in the immediate run-up to Election Day.
Boasberg's order follows a pattern of federal courts stepping in to halt the administration's election oversight efforts. Carter's warning to the DOJ came in a lawsuit the department itself filed against California, an unusual posture in which the federal government sued a state over its election procedures and a judge then told the department to stop threatening the state's workers.
The practical effect for California voters is immediate: county election officials who had been preparing for the possibility of segregating ballots cast by the flagged individuals now have a federal order telling them the demand cannot be enforced. Whether those ballots would have been excluded from the final count or simply held separately has not been spelled out in the public record, and California's own election code governs how such ballots are handled.
For the Trump administration, the ruling is the latest setback in an election-integrity push that has run into resistance from federal judges at nearly every turn. The department has argued it has authority to ensure that only eligible citizens vote in federal elections. The courts have so far said the department's method — demanding that states set aside ballots based on a federal database comparison — goes beyond what the Constitution and federal law allow, at least before those claims are tested in individual cases.
Our Take
Here's what the legacy media won't tell you: the Department of Justice wasn't trying to throw anyone's ballot in the trash. It was trying to make sure that ballots cast by people the federal government believes may not be citizens weren't counted until those claims could be checked. That is not disenfranchisement — that is the bare minimum of election integrity. Yet two Obama-appointed judges and a Supreme Court that declined to step in have now made it impossible for California to even set those ballots aside while the questions are resolved.
Why is California so desperate to keep those ballots in the pile? Why is the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights so determined to stop a review that, if it found nothing, would clear its members? And why did the Supreme Court decline to intervene one day before an election rather than let the process play out? Patriots, the system is telling you something. The courts have decided that 20,000 questioned ballots in one state are more sacred than the integrity of the entire federal election. Remember that when you cast your vote — and remember who stood up for the scrutiny and who ran to a judge to stop it.
