'Once a Vote Is Segregated, Lasting Harm Has Occurred': Judge Refuses DOJ Bid to Pull 20,000 California Ballots

A federal judge in California on Wednesday denied the Justice Department's emergency request to make state and local election officials stop processing ballots tied to about 20,000 people the department says are "likely" noncitizens, NPR reported.

In a 26-page ruling, U.S. District Judge David Carter refused to issue a temporary restraining order. "Never before in American history has the federal government, on the eve of an election, sought to coerce a state and local government to abandon their own Constitutional elections procedures and bend to the will of the Executive Branch," he wrote.

He ended the order with a warning about the stakes. "Once a vote is segregated, lasting harm has occurred," Carter wrote. "If the Executive can discount votes and threaten an ongoing election due to unproven allegations, then our democracy is in danger. This Court declines to be a party to such process."

The department filed the suit on Oct. 15. It argues the matter is urgent because once election workers verify signatures on returned mail-ballot envelopes, they separate ballots from envelopes to protect voter secrecy, after which an ineligible ballot cannot be retrieved. State and local officials countered that the list is unreliable, that a preliminary Los Angeles County analysis found many people on it do not have active voter registrations, and that setting ballots aside days before the election would be unlawful, unworkable and disenfranchising.

The accuracy of the list was the core factual dispute. A Los Angeles County review of a small sample found a significant share had said in records they were born in the United States. Nicolas Bartell, a senior U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services official, said in court filings that his office's review found none of those people were U.S.-born, while acknowledging four "might have a claim to U.S. citizenship." University of Delaware political scientist Kassra Oskooi, an expert for voting-rights groups that intervened in the case, said the matching protocol "is likely to be unreliable." Carter wrote that the protocol "raises significant concerns" and that he could not conclude the process is credible.

The judge pointed to another remedy: the government can continue to indict people for illegally voting as noncitizens. Department officials say they have charged dozens of people in the last two months for registering or voting without citizenship. Audits and investigations have shown noncitizen voting to be extremely rare, NPR noted.

The department quickly filed a notice of appeal. "Every day, more ballots are processed by election officials. This ongoing emergency disenfranchises American citizens through dilution," Bill Essayli, the top federal prosecutor in Los Angeles, wrote on X, saying he would seek an emergency order from the 9th Circuit. The case could reach the U.S. Supreme Court.

California Attorney General Rob Bonta called the ruling an important victory. "But this fight is not over," he said. Jonathan Miller of the Public Rights Project, counsel for Los Angeles County, said the decision "makes clear that the federal government's actions are election interference."

The California case is one of several unusual federal actions close to Election Day. NPR reported that prosecutors asked Washington state officials this week to review 400 registered voters and that the department sued in Alaska seeking to block certification of its Senate race under certain conditions. In Massachusetts, the department plans to send poll monitors to Boston and Lowell, which Secretary of the Commonwealth William Galvin said will check language and disability access.

Pending: whether the 9th Circuit acts before Nov. 3, and how many ballots tied to the list have already been separated from their envelopes.