Judge blocks DOJ bid to segregate 20,000 California ballots

A federal judge in California denied the Justice Department's emergency request to stop the processing of ballots for 20,000 voters.

U.S. District Judge David Carter, a Clinton appointee, issued a 26-page ruling on Wednesday evening. He rejected the government's application for a temporary restraining order that would have forced state and local officials to set aside specific mail-in ballots.

The Justice Department filed the lawsuit on Oct. 15. The suit seeks to identify ballots belonging to individuals federal officials label as likely noncitizens. The department argues that these votes dilute the power of U.S. citizens. It maintains that the situation is urgent because mail-in ballot processing is already underway.

Federal prosecutors explain that once signatures on returned envelopes are verified, ballots are separated to protect voter confidentiality. This separation makes it impossible to retrieve an ineligible ballot later. The DOJ contends that delaying action until after processing would render its efforts futile.

California officials argue the federal list is unreliable. A preliminary analysis by Los Angeles County found that many people on the list do not have active voter registrations. State Attorney General Rob Bonta, a Democrat, told the court that the litigation is a precursor to further interference. He warned that the process risks disenfranchising eligible voters days before Election Day.

Carter agreed with the state's concerns about potential chaos. He wrote that never before has the federal government sought to coerce a state to abandon its constitutional election procedures on the eve of an election. Carter stated that once a vote is segregated, lasting harm has occurred. He noted that if the executive branch can discount votes based on unproven allegations, the democracy is in danger.

The judge suggested the federal government can address illegal voting through criminal indictments rather than civil interference. DOJ officials say they have charged dozens of people in the last two months for registering or voting without being citizens. The department is expected to appeal the ruling. The case could eventually reach the U.S. Supreme Court.

This lawsuit is part of a series of actions by the Justice Department in states close to the election. On Monday, federal prosecutors asked Washington state officials to review a list of 400 registered voters. Last week, the DOJ filed a suit in Alaska seeking to stop the certification of Senate race results if the Republican incumbent loses to a spoiler candidate. In California, experts continue to dispute the accuracy of the federal matching protocol. Political scientist Kassra Oskooi, an expert witness for voting rights groups, declared that the USCIS methodology is likely to be unreliable. USCIS official Nicolas Bartell countered in court filings that his office found none of the sampled individuals were U.S.-born, though he acknowledged four might have a claim to citizenship.