LOS ANGELES: US District Judge David O. Carter on Wednesday rejected a Justice Department request to segregate ballots associated with more than 20,000 California voters whose citizenship federal officials questioned.
Carter denied a temporary restraining order that would have required election officials to separate the affected mail ballots and withhold them from counting pending citizenship checks. The decision concerns emergency relief, rather than a final dismissal of the lawsuit.
He warned that the intervention could disrupt an election already underway and deprive eligible citizens of their votes.
“Constitutional rights and our democracy are at stake,” Carter wrote.
Registered voters should not lose that right because of unsupported allegations arising from an uncertain verification process, he added. His ruling also criticised the federal government’s attempt to override California’s election procedures immediately before polling day.
The US Department of Justice filed its lawsuit on October 15, working with the Department of Homeland Security. Federal officials argued that their review of voter-registration information and immigration records identified people likely to be noncitizens.
They sought to have ballots associated with those individuals held separately until citizenship could be verified. The department maintained that the measure would protect eligible Americans’ votes from unlawful voting. California disputed both the federal list’s reliability and the proposed remedy.
State Attorney General Rob Bonta’s office said the administration had acknowledged that its list could include US citizens. It also pointed to the federal government’s earlier allegation that California’s rolls contained about 190,000 noncitizens, a substantially larger figure than the one used in the lawsuit.
Bonta welcomed the ruling and said California would continue seeking dismissal of the case. His office argued that unproven citizenship allegations could not justify disrupting an ongoing election. The Justice Department said it would appeal, according to the Associated Press.
California’s dispute is unfolding during early voting for the November 3 midterm elections, which will determine control of the US House of Representatives and Senate.
(With additional input from AFP and the Associated Press)
