Federal judge warns Trump administration’s bid to set aside 20,000 California mail ballots would ‘wreak havoc’

By Katelyn Polantz, Tierney Sneed, CNN

(CNN) — A federal judge is refusing to allow the Justice Department to intervene in California’s ongoing mail-in ballot counting, warning that the Trump administration’s request to segregate as many as 20,000 ballots to vet voters’ citizenship would “wreak havoc and disrupt the election that is already underway.”

Federal Judge David O. Carter of the Central District of California said the administration’s attempt to question whether thousands of the state’s voters are noncitizens would violate the state’s right to run its own election and compromise decades of voting and civil rights protections.

The Justice Department had based its emergency lawsuit on what it said was a purchased list of California’s voters, matched with other government data.

“Individuals who have met the requirements of California’s voter registration laws must not be deprived of a core right merely because of unfounded allegations stemming from a procedure rife with uncertainty and errors,” Carter wrote.

The judge, a Clinton appointee, wrote that the administration’s request would “create a chilling effect on election workers and voters alike, and discount the votes of United States citizens.”

The Justice Department quickly filed in court Wednesday evening that it was appealing Carter’s ruling. The case had already traveled to the appeals court once last week, when Carter did not issue a ruling as quickly the administration had asked for. The US 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, in a 2-1 ruling, sent the case back to Carter saying the appeal was premature. But the two judges in the majority also indicated they believed the DOJ’s arguments for segregating ballots were likely to fail on the merits as well.

The California case has widely been viewed by election law experts as a test of how far the Justice Department might try to go to disrupt or dispute a state’s ballot-counting process.

Carter, in his 26-page order the day after a lengthy hearing, said the Justice Department had its own legal tool already in which it could combat voter fraud, with federal prosecutions of noncitizens accused of unlawfully voting.

“The United States does not explain why Defendants continuing to count ballots impairs any present or future [illegal voting] prosecution,” Carter wrote. “Federal law is enforced by the federal government. State participation (or lack thereof) in that enforcement does not bear on how the federal government chooses to allocate its own resources or officers.”

For months, the administration had previewed plans to assemble lists, using controversial federal data-matching programs, of who it thinks could be unlawfully registered to vote, and provide those lists to election officials with threats of prosecution or other legal action if the officials don’t take adequate action on the information.

Since bringing its lawsuit against California, the Justice Department has also presented a similar list to Washington state election officials and earlier this year made sweeping claims about noncitizens registered to vote in three other Democratic-led states.

The administration has kept secret key details about how it analyzed California’s voter list and came to the conclusion that thousands of those individuals could be noncitizens. The Department of Homeland Security claimed in July that 190,000 registered California voters could be ineligible foreigners. The agency filed its lawsuit after providing elections officials – via thumb drive with a password handwritten on a post-it note – a list of 20,000 of supposedly “high confidence” matches and gave the state just 48 hours to act on the information.

In their early analysis of the list, local election officials have found that a significant portion of the names are either not on their rolls or are in a suspended status, meaning they would not receive a mail ballot. They’ve also seen indications that some of the people that DOJ is identifying as likely non-citizens are in fact US-born, though DHS officials disputed this in declarations to the court.

This story has been updated with additional details.

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