Nov 2 (Reuters) – Acting on the eve of the US midterm elections, the Supreme Court quickly rejected on Monday a bid by President Donald Trump’s administration to temporarily block California from counting mail-in ballots from more than 20,000 registered voters who federal officials allege are likely non-US citizens.
The Supreme Court’s brief, one-sentence order on Monday did not offer any explanation of its action, as is common when it handles emergency matters. A federal appeals court refused the administration’s request on Friday. And a federal judge on Sunday dismissed the administration’s lawsuit concerning the US Senate race in Alaska.
The Justice Department sued in federal court on October 15, claiming California is unlawfully preventing its enforcement of a 1996 US law that makes it a criminal offense for noncitizens to vote in federal elections. California has said that the state’s safeguards against noncitizen voting are robust and that the lawsuit threatens to deprive 20,000 people of their right to vote based on vague accusations. No justice publicly dissented from the decision. The court also did not ask California for a response to the administration’s request, a step that, when taken, usually signals serious consideration of an emergency case. The US Constitution assigns the responsibility of administering elections to states, though the federal government has some oversight. The lawsuit marked a rare federal intervention in the voting process and signaled a willingness by the administration to contest the election results in court. The administration already sought to restrict voting by mail — a mode of casting ballots used more often by Democratic-leaning voters — but the Supreme Court in September rebuffed that effort.
“Once California commingles the challenged ballots with lawful ones, there is no way to get the challenged ballots back,” the Justice Department said in its request to the Supreme Court. The department said California’s action violated the Constitution’s Supremacy Clause, which holds that federal law generally preempts state law. The administration’s process for scrutinizing voter lists to identify noncitizens is flawed and likely rife with errors, it said in court papers.
