Mail-in Voting: Judge Rejects California Ballot Block Bid
A federal judge has rejected the Trump administration’s attempt to stop California from counting mail ballots from more than 20,000 registered voters, delivering the latest courtroom setback to the president’s push for a larger federal role in running elections just days before the November 3 midterm elections. United States District Judge David O. Carter ruled on Wednesday that the Justice Department could not block the state from counting ballots from people on a federal list the administration describes as likely noncitizens, after a hearing in Los Angeles federal court on Tuesday. The decision keeps those ballots in the count as early voting continues across the country’s most populous state, and it sets up an immediate appeal to the federal appeals court in San Francisco. It is the most significant mail-in voting ruling of the midterm cycle so far, and its language was unusually blunt.
The ruling landed six days before Election Day, in a contest in which the president’s party is fighting to hold control of both houses of Congress. The Justice Department had asked the court for a temporary restraining order barring California officials from counting any ballots from the voters it flagged, arguing that the ballots should be set aside until the voters’ citizenship could be verified. Judge Carter refused, and in doing so he framed the request as something without precedent in American history. The administration immediately signaled it would appeal, but for now the ballots will be counted like any others.
Mail-in Voting: What Judge Carter Decided
Judge Carter’s written decision pulled no punches. “Never before in American history has the federal government, on the eve of an election, sought to coerce a state and local government to abandon their own Constitutional elections procedures and bend to the will of the Executive Branch,” he wrote. He warned that granting the government’s request would risk lasting damage to public confidence in elections, writing that “eroded trust in our democracy is irreparable” and that “once a vote is segregated, lasting harm has occurred.” In a passage that quickly drew attention, he added: “If the Executive can discount votes and threaten an ongoing election due to unproven allegations, then our democracy is in danger.”
The judge’s reasoning went beyond rhetoric. He concluded that the Justice Department was unlikely to succeed on multiple fronts, finding that the government likely lacks standing and a legal cause of action to bring the claim, that the federal criminal prohibition on voting by noncitizens does not give the department authority to override California’s ballot-processing rules, and that the remedy it sought would likely violate several federal voting laws. He also rejected the government’s claim of an emergency, writing that its eleventh-hour predicament was solely due to its own neglect: the lawsuit was filed on October 15, weeks after early voting had begun and only days before the election, and the government had taken time to recognize that California state law governs how ballots are issued and processed. A separate account of the ruling reported that the judge said forcing the state to set aside the ballots would “wreak havoc” on midterm elections that are already underway.
California officials had argued all along that the federal list could not be trusted. The state said its safeguards against voting by noncitizens are robust, that the Justice Department’s assertions relied on suspect data, and that complying with the government’s demands would risk disenfranchising eligible voters who had done nothing wrong. State officials pointed out that the federal government had at one point accused California of having 190,000 illegal voters on its books, before revising that figure down to 20,000 when it filed its emergency lawsuit. The judge’s decision sided with the state’s position, finding that registered voters must not be deprived of a core right merely because of unfounded allegations stemming from a procedure rife with uncertainty and errors.
DOJ News: How the Case Got Here
The case, United States v. State of California, is the first time the Trump administration has asked a court to stop a state from counting votes, and its path through the courts has been as fast-moving as it has been contentious. The Justice Department filed the lawsuit on October 15, a rare federal intervention in the voting process only weeks before a national election. The department sought an emergency order from the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco, asking the appeals court to intervene immediately and order the ballots segregated while the government checked whether the voters are citizens. On Monday, a three-judge panel of that court ruled 2-1 that it lacked jurisdiction over the appeal, because the department had not given the district court an adequate chance to consider its request first, and it denied the emergency request as moot.
That ruling sent the dispute back to the trial court, where Judge Carter heard the government’s request at a hearing on Tuesday afternoon in downtown Los Angeles. The hearing drew national attention as an early test of how far the administration’s election agenda could go in court, and the judge’s Wednesday decision answered that question, at least for now, with a firm no. The case has emerged as an early flashpoint between the federal government and a Democratic-led state in an election in which the president is already casting doubt on the outcome with claims of widespread voter fraud by noncitizens, claims that multiple studies and state audits have found to be rare.
The decision is also the latest in a string of setbacks for the administration’s election efforts. The appeals court’s Monday ruling had already cast doubt on the validity of the government’s case, and the district court’s decision goes further, reaching the merits of the department’s arguments and finding them wanting. Democratic Party leaders have sued the administration over the ballot request, accusing Republicans of aiming threats and intimidation at state and local officials before the vote, and the judge’s language about coercion echoed those arguments. The Justice Department did not immediately respond to requests for comment after the ruling, but its next move was not long in coming.
Midterm Elections 2026: Why California Is the Focal Point
California’s centrality to this fight is no accident. It is the most populous state in the country, a Democratic stronghold, and it holds more seats in the House of Representatives — 52 — than any other state, making its ballots matter enormously to the battle for control of Congress. President Trump has made California a focal point of his sweeping immigration crackdown since returning to the White House, accusing the state of undermining public safety through its sanctuary policies that limit cooperation with federal immigration enforcement. The ballot lawsuit fits squarely into that broader confrontation, extending a fight over immigration policy into the machinery of elections themselves.
The California case is also part of a much wider federal effort. The administration has issued more than 100 subpoenas across at least 13 states as its search for alleged noncitizen voters ramps up, turning what began as a single-state lawsuit into a national program of election scrutiny. That expansion has alarmed state election officials across the country, who argue that voter rolls are a state responsibility under the Constitution and that federal intervention weeks before an election risks chaos in vote counting. Supporters of the administration’s approach answer that the federal government has a legitimate interest in ensuring that only citizens vote, and that states have not done enough to clean their rolls. The courts, so far, have been skeptical of the administration’s methods even where they have not ruled on the underlying claims.
The timing of the ruling matters as much as its content. With Election Day on November 3 less than a week away, millions of Californians have already voted by mail, and election officials are already processing and counting ballots. An order to segregate 20,000 ballots at this stage would have forced counties to change their procedures midstream, with workers sorting and setting aside ballots under a court deadline while the rest of the count continued. Judge Carter’s decision avoids that disruption, but it does not end the legal fight, and the uncertainty it leaves behind will hang over the final days of the campaign in a state where the stakes could hardly be higher.
What Happens Next
The Justice Department moved within hours of the ruling to keep the case alive. First Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli announced on Wednesday evening that the administration had filed a notice of appeal and would seek emergency relief from the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, the same court that rejected its earlier emergency request on jurisdictional grounds on Monday. “The district court denied our emergency request to sequester ballots from 20,000 suspected noncitizens,” Essayli said. “Every day, more ballots are processed by election officials. This ongoing emergency disenfranchises American citizens through dilution. The Solicitor General authorized an immediate appeal. We filed our Notice of Appeal and will immediately seek an emergency order from the Ninth Circuit.” The appeals court will now have to decide, on an emergency timetable, whether to intervene before Election Day.
For California’s election officials, the practical instruction for now is unchanged: keep counting. Ballots from the flagged voters will be processed alongside all others unless a higher court orders otherwise, and county registrars across the state will continue the work of tabulating a vote that is already well underway. If the 9th Circuit declines to intervene, the case will continue on a normal schedule long after the election is over, with the ballots already counted and the result certified. If the appeals court does intervene, it would have to do so within days, in the middle of the final weekend of voting, and any order would likely be challenged again in turn.
The broader significance of the ruling will be debated well beyond this election. Judge Carter’s opinion draws a sharp line around the federal government’s power to second-guess state election procedures on the eve of a vote, and it does so in language that future courts will quote whether they agree with it or not. The administration’s appeal will test whether that line holds, and the outcome will shape how aggressively federal authorities can intervene in state elections in future cycles. For now, though, the immediate result is clear: in California, six days before the midterms, the ballots will be counted, and the voters on the government’s list will not have their votes set aside on the basis of allegations the court found unproven.
Source: Reuters