The Trump administration’s attempt to force California to pull roughly 20,000 mail ballots out of the count has been knocked back again, with a federal appeals court on Friday refusing to order the state to set them aside just five days before the midterm elections.
A three-judge panel of the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals ruled 2-1 against the Justice Department, two days after a federal judge in California rejected the same request. The administration says the ballots were sent to people who may not be US citizens. California says the government’s list is unreliable and is likely to include large numbers of eligible voters.
What the courts said
On Wednesday, US District Judge David Carter turned down the department’s request for an emergency order, finding that it ran against longstanding constitutional principles that leave the running of elections to the states. “California and its people are sovereign, too,” he wrote, according to CBS News. He described the method used to build the list as vague, said he could not conclude it was credible, and warned that separating the ballots would be likely to disenfranchise legitimate voters in an election already under way.
At a hearing, the judge suggested the proper remedy was for prosecutors to pursue anyone who voted illegally after the election, pointing out that ballot return envelopes carry identifying information.
On Friday the appeals panel upheld his approach. Judge Mark J. Bennett, a Trump appointee, and Judge Gabriel P. Sanchez, appointed by Joe Biden, accepted the lower court’s finding that there was no workable way to pick out individual ballots without potentially catastrophic effects on the whole system, AP reported via PBS NewsHour. Judge Patrick J. Bumatay, another Trump appointee, dissented, arguing that California’s refusal encouraged a breach of federal law and that difficulty was no excuse for giving up.
It is the second time in a week the 9th Circuit has declined to intervene. Earlier, a divided panel dismissed a related appeal as premature and sent the case back to Judge Carter to rule first.
How the list was built, and why it is disputed
The Justice Department sent letters to election officials claiming about 20,000 suspected non-citizens were registered and had been sent mail ballots, giving them 48 hours to review the names. It then sued the state, Secretary of State Shirley Weber and Los Angeles County’s registrar, Dean Logan, arguing that mixing those ballots with others dilutes the votes of citizens. Bill Essayli, the top federal prosecutor in Los Angeles, told the court the government was not asking for any ballot to be voided or cancelled.
Los Angeles County, however, called the federal data unreliable. In court filings, it said only about 7,000 of the 20,000 records had addresses in the county. In a sample of 200 names, more than half were cancelled or inactive registrations, meaning no ballot had been posted, and of those who listed a birthplace, just over 38 per cent said they were born in the United States, CBS reported. A US Citizenship and Immigration Services official told the court immigration records showed none of the sample was US-born, while acknowledging around 189 records had minor data discrepancies.
State officials called the lawsuit a reckless political stunt designed to cast doubt on the results. California also complained that the government had not been clear about when it obtained the list.
Part of a wider push
California is not the only target. Earlier this week the Justice Department wrote to Washington state’s secretary of state, Steve Hobbs, asking him to set aside ballots from more than 400 people it alleges registered without citizenship. Mr Hobbs said his office was reviewing the request but argued its timing was designed to cast unfounded suspicion on the result.
The administration has also deployed hundreds of investigators to look for non-citizen voters, an initiative now being challenged in a separate lawsuit by a civil rights group that says it intimidates naturalised citizens. A coalition of trade unions including the AFL-CIO and AFSCME has asked a federal judge to block Justice Department demands that officials stop counting ballots, and to drop criminal threats against them.
Voting by non-citizens in federal elections is already illegal. Critics of the administration argue the late legal moves risk undermining trust in the count, while supporters say they are needed to enforce the law.
What happens next
Justice Department lawyers have said they intend to keep appealing, which could take the dispute to the US Supreme Court before or after polling day. The department did not immediately comment on Friday’s ruling.
In the meantime, three Los Angeles County election officials have been asked to appear before a federal grand jury on 4 November, the day after the election, according to AP. Separately, a federal judge in Washington has ordered the government to share its disputed list with lawyers for two advocacy groups so they can assess its impact on eligible voters. Unless a higher court steps in, California will count the ballots in the normal way.
Sources
- PBS NewsHour / AP: Appeals court rejects Justice Department request for California to set aside disputed ballots (30 October 2026)
- CBS News: Judge rejects Trump administration’s push to force California to set aside thousands of mail ballots (28 October 2026)
- ABC News: Judge rejects Trump administration request for order to segregate 20,000 California ballots (28 October 2026)
- NationofChange: Judge rejects DOJ bid to set aside 20,000 California mail ballots (30 October 2026)
- Just Security: Early Edition, October 29, 2026 (29 October 2026)
Featured image: photo by Tiffany Tertipes on Unsplash.
Leave a Reply