A federal judge on Wednesday (October 28, 2026) rejected the U.S.
Department of Justice’s efforts to set aside the ballots of more than 20,000 California voters it said might not be citizens , slamming the move as brazen pre-election “interference.”
U.S. District Judge David O. Carter agreed, refusing to order the seizure of the ballots and siding with the Government of Democratic-led California. Carter wrote in his decision. A similar controversy arose in neighboring Nevada, where the allegations fizzled.
The case sparked an uproar ahead of the November 3 midterms, in which President Donald Trump’s Republican Party is at risk of losing its control of Congress, and appears to represent another attempt to cast doubt on electoral results. The federal government in recent months had accused California of having 1,90,000 illegal voters on its books. The Trump administration had initially identified 16,000 non-citizen voters there, but after verification procedures that number dropped to 185, and then to zero.
Democratic Party leaders have sued the Trump administration over the request, accusing Republicans of aiming “threats and intimidation” at State and local officials before the vote. “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,” Mr.
