Trump Tried To 'Interfere' In US Polls With 'Non-Citizen Voters' List. How He Hit A Wall In Court

New Delhi: Hours before Americans voted in the midterm elections that delivered a setback to Donald Trump, the US Supreme Court refused to let his government stop California from counting thousands of ballots it claimed were linked to "likely" non-citizens. Judges who examined the lists questioned whether they were reliable at all.Through the Justice Department, Trump's Republican administration wanted California to set aside ballots from about 20,000 registered voters until their citizenship could be checked. The department warned that election workers who counted them could be prosecuted. Trump endorsed the warning on Truth Social: "They will all go to jail for a long period of time!!!"Trump has pointed to India in pressing for checks on whether all American voters are even US citizens. India's Special Intensive Revision (SIR) has removed about 13 crore names from voter lists, though the Election Commission of India (ECI) has not published how many of those were found to be non-citizens. Political rhetoric, however, has been similar in both countries, focused on "infiltrators". In Trump's California focus, there are two Indians among the 28 people facing individual allegations of voter fraud.READ | JD Vance Says Iran War "Reason" Why Republicans Lost US Midterm ElectionsWhy The List Did Not Hold UpIn the US case, the list of likely non-citizens on California's voter rolls was compiled by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). In July, DHS had told California that nearly 200,000 (2 lakh) non-citizens might be on its rolls. The list it sent in October had about 20,000 names.When Los Angeles County officials checked a sample of 200 names, 38.9 per cent of the records that listed a birthplace showed a US birth, which is strong evidence of citizenship. Of the 200, 112 had cancelled or inactive registrations. The review "indicates that the October List is unreliable", officials told a court. The Trump administration did say that "there may be some names on there who it turns out ultimately are citizens".There was a precedent for this kind of uncertain data being presented as a big crackdown on voter fraud. In Nevada, the federal government initially floated nearly 16,000 names, but cut that to 185 after a manual review. All 185 turned out to be citizens.READ | Elon Musk Spent Rs 4,700 Crore On Midterms. Now Democrats May Come For His EmpireHow The Courts Shut It Down, For NowOn October 28, in the case of California, the district judge refused to order the ballots set aside, saying the request "would wreak havoc" on an election already underway. District Judge David Carter called the government's request evidence of “a broad, ongoing pattern of attempted election interference”."If the Executive can discount votes and threaten an ongoing election due to unproven allegations, then our democracy is in danger," the judge wrote. The court said the department remained free to prosecute individual non-citizens where it had evidence that they voted illegally, but could not impose its own procedures on the state. The US does not have a central poll body. Each of its 50 states runs its own elections and keeps its own voter list.When the Trump administration appealed, a three-judge panel agreed with the district court. The Supreme Court did the same on November 2, on the eve of the election.Agents At The DoorTrump's administration, meanwhile, also took its hunt for "non-citizen voters" to people's doorsteps. Under a DHS programme called the 'Unlawful Voter Initiative', agents visited homes in nine states to question people about citizenship and voting. Investigators were told to target those who had acquired citizenship by naturalisation, as opposed to birth, to check whether they had voted before becoming citizens.The agents got no more than 12 minutes to assess each person, news agency AP reported. This 'Unlawful Voter Initiative' ran into a wall in court too, as a district judge halted it on October 21 until polls closed. The judge noted that there was a high likelihood of error because there is no federal database containing the citizenship status of US residents.Yet, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin claimed in an interview on October 31, without evidence, that his agency had found 300,000 (3 lakh) non-citizens on the rolls.The push to remove non-citizens from voter lists did not fail wholly. On September 25, the Supreme Court allowed the administration to offer states its SAVE citizenship database, which 27 states use, mostly those ruled by Trump's Republican Party. Individual cases continue.READ | 'SIR' In America Too? India Cue In Trump's Mass Citizenship Check For VotersTrump's India Shoutout EchoesWhen Trump argues for checking whether American voters are actually citizens, he points to India and Brazil.In August, Trump even name-checked Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar while praising India's voting system.In India, Opposition parties have been holding protests, demanding Gyanesh Kumar's resignation over the SIR.Read: Opinion | Trump's Midterm Rout Has One More Victim: JD VanceThe American push echoed the stated logic of India's SIR, which also put citizenship at its centre. India's Supreme Court upheld the SIR in May, confirming the ECI's power to scrutinise citizenship. About 13 crore names, roughly 14 per cent of pre-SIR voters, were removed in the draft rolls. That figure included dead, shifted, and duplicate entries, as well as "logical discrepancy" cases such as misspellings. Deletion from the voter list is not, in Indian law, a finding on citizenship, and the Supreme Court has said so.Claims of weeding out the infiltrators (non-citizens) continue. On November 2, the day the US top court refused to halt California's doubtful votes from being counted, Home Minister Amit Shah addressed a BJP event in Hyderabad, where he said about 3 crore of the names removed were "infiltrators" or, more pointedly, "Bangladeshi infiltrators".He called the Congress rally led by Rahul Gandhi in Delhi the previous day a "Ghuspaithiya Bachao Rally" to "save infiltrators".The language by Donald Trump and Narendra Modi's governments has been similar on the issue. Amit Shah told the Lok Sabha in December 2025, "We will detect the infiltrators, delete them from the voter lists and deport them to whichever country they have come from." A DHS official told Time magazine, "We will find you, arrest you, and you will face the consequences."West Bengal has often been cited by the BJP and others as a place with a huge number of infiltrators. There, about 27 lakh names were deleted under "logical discrepancy" for mismatched spellings and improbable age gaps, among other reasons. Many of those flagged turned out to be genuine months after the elections were over. Over 93 per cent of the 1.26 lakh SIR appeals decided by September 16 restored the voter, according to figures filed in the Supreme Court by the poll body.