Trump administration asks judge to sequester California votes by ‘noncitizens’

The judge will have another hearing in two weeks, once he has a more fully developed evidentiary record, to decide if the government is entitled to a preliminary injunction.LOS ANGELES (CN) — The Trump administration on Tuesday asked a federal judge to order California to sequester as many as 20,000 ballots until the state has verified they were cast by U.S. citizens.U.S. District Judge David Carter did not rule on the Justice Department’s request for a temporary restraining order, typically a short-term remedy, but said he would issue a decision Wednesday.Meanwhile, the judge, a Bill Clinton appointee, urged the government to cease any harassment of local election officials.The hearing in downtown Los Angeles comes a day after the Ninth Circuit refused the government’s emergency request for a preliminary injunction to force California election officials to set aside ballots cast by “likely” noncitizens.Carter indicated during the hearing that he may hold another hearing in two weeks to consider whether a preliminary injunction, a longer-term remedy, is warranted once he has better information about the purported noncitizens on California’s voter rolls. He described the arguments before him as “conclusionary.”Noting that allowing the federal government to get involved in how California conducts its elections would be “monumental,” Carter appointed a so-called special master to help him obtain relevant information from the parties.“When we exercise our right to vote, we exercise equality,” he said, adding that no one wants noncitizens to cast ballots.He also pointed out that the Justice Department is capable of enforcing the federal prohibition on noncitizens voting in elections. A week ago, the department announced that 28 foreigners had been charged for doing just that.While First Assistant U.S. Attorney Bilal Essayli argued that the government has credible evidence and a good-faith belief that California’s voter rolls include noncitizens, attorneys for the state argued that a list compiled by the Department of Homeland Security is demonstrably unreliable.Deputy California Attorney General Michael Cohen also pointed Carter to Monday’s Ninth Circuit dismissal of the government’s attempt to get the appellate court to weigh in before Carter had heard the case.In particular, Cohen cited a concurrence by U.S. Circuit Judge Mark Bennett, a Donald Trump appointee, who said the government was unlikely to succeed on the merits of its claims because the federal statute making it a misdemeanor for noncitizens to vote does not preempt California’s constitutional authority to set its own election procedures.Voting by noncitizens is also illegal under California law, but the state, in accordance with federal law, relies on residents’ certification that they are citizens when registering to vote.Carter in January threw out a lawsuit by the Trump administration seeking to force California to turn over its unredacted voter rolls, including registered voters’ names, addresses, Social Security numbers and voting histories. Carter said it appeared the executive branch wanted to abridge the right of many Americans to cast their ballots.Much of the discussion before a large crowd of lawyers and observers centered on the sources and reliability of a list of potentially ineligible voters that Homeland Security compiled and forwarded to California Secretary of State Shirley Weber for verification of their citizenship.In July, Homeland Security claimed as many as 190,000 noncitizens were registered to vote in California. Earlier this month, however, after mail-in voting had already begun in the state, the department lowered that figure to about 20,000.The Justice Department sued California two days after demanding that Weber segregate the ballots of those 20,000 possible noncitizens.Essayli told the judge that the government’s list was based on redacted California voting records that were “enhanced” with information from a Lexis Nexis database and compared with Homeland Security immigration data. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services agents then reviewed the list to remove citizens, he said.According to the prosecutor, 98% of the list is correct.“We can’t force California to take any particular steps,” Essayli told the judge. “But they can’t knowingly process ballots by noncitizens.”Anna Baldwin, an attorney representing the League of United Latin American Citizens and other proposed intervenors in the litigation, argued that using alien numbers to identify possible noncitizens is a “deeply troubling” process with a well-known error rate.“You can’t treat people as presumptively ineligible unless they prove otherwise,” she said. “This will result in disenfranchisement of U.S. citizens.”Subscribe to our free newslettersOur weekly newsletter Closing Arguments offers the latest about ongoing trials, major litigation and rulings in courthouses around the U.S. and the world, while the monthly Under the Lights dishes the legal dirt from Hollywood, sports, Big Tech and the arts.Additional Reads