OMM Newsroom
The Trump administration on Monday asked the US Supreme Court to order California election officials to segregate mail-in ballots from more than 20,000 registered voters suspected by federal authorities of being noncitizens, Anadolu Agency reported.
In an emergency application seeking a “limited injunction”, US Solicitor General D. John Sauer urged the court to stop California from mixing ballots cast by citizens with those of suspected noncitizens. He said the requested measure would not cancel votes but would allow time to verify the voters’ eligibility.
“Once California commingles the challenged ballots with lawful ones, there is no way to get the challenged ballots back,” Sauer wrote, arguing that the court needed to intervene before county workers completed processing early returns.
The filing asks the Supreme Court to overturn lower federal court rulings that rejected requests to isolate the disputed ballots on the eve of Tuesday’s midterm elections. Tens of millions of early ballots have already been cast nationwide.
Federal authorities compiled the list of more than 20,000 people using database cross-checks by US Citizenship and Immigration Services and manual reviews by Homeland Security investigators. Officials provided the records to California authorities in mid-October, but state officials declined to set the ballots aside.
Justice Department attorneys argue that federal law bars noncitizens from voting in federal elections and that federal statutes take precedence over state election rules.
