Ballot Battles: 9th Circuit Blocks Federal Effort to Remove 20,000 Votes

The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals rejected the Justice Department's bid to have California set aside 20,000 disputed ballots in the upcoming midterm election. The federal government argues that these votes belong to individuals who may not be U.S. citizens and should not be counted until their status is verified. California officials counter that the list is unreliable and likely contains many eligible citizens.

In a 2-1 ruling on Friday, the appellate panel sided with the state, marking another loss for the Trump administration's push to control state-run elections. Judge Mark J. Bennett, appointed by President Donald Trump, and Judge Gabriel P. Sanchez, appointed by former President Joe Biden, authored the majority opinion. They concurred with a lower court judge who had previously denied the request and warned that the federal demands could disenfranchise voters.

The court stated that there is no feasible method to identify and separate the ballots of specific individuals without causing catastrophic effects on the entire system. This finding is critical because hundreds of thousands of ballots have already been processed by California elections officials. Those officials note that processed votes are completely anonymized, making it impossible to match them back to the voters who submitted them.

The legal conflict intensifies as millions of Californians have already voted ahead of Tuesday's election. The Justice Department maintains that counting votes from noncitizens dilutes the voice of citizens. Top federal prosecutor Bill Essayli warned that any election official who knowingly processes a noncitizen's ballot opens themselves to legal jeopardy.

This ruling is part of a wider federal scrutiny of local elections. The administration has issued subpoenas in Alaska regarding a spoiler candidate and provided a list of alleged noncitizen voters to officials in Washington state. Earlier on Friday, a federal judge in Washington ordered the administration to share the disputed list of names with lawyers for the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights and the UCLA Voting Rights Project.

Democratic gubernatorial candidate Xavier Becerra serves as an adviser to the UCLA Voting Rights Project. Two groups, including Becerra's organization, sued the Homeland Security Department in early October to stop it from using federal immigration data to challenge voter rolls. They argued that data-matching methods risk disenfranchising citizens and disproportionately target naturalized citizens.

A coalition of unions, including the A.F.L.-C.I.O. and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, joined the legal challenge on Friday. They are asking a federal judge to block the Justice Department from demanding that local officials stop counting ballots or threatening criminal prosecution. At least three Los Angeles County election officials have been subpoenaed to appear before a grand jury on Nov. 4, the day after the election.