Appeals Court Weighs DOJ Bid to Set Aside 20,000 California Ballots From Suspected Noncitizens
A federal appeals court is weighing the Justice Department’s emergency request to force California to set aside roughly 20,000 mail ballots sent to people the department suspects are not U.S. citizens.
The Ninth Circuit ordered California to respond by noon Saturday after the department asked for a ruling by then, Fox News reported. No ruling had been reported as of Saturday afternoon.
“This is an emergency,” said the filing by Attorney General Todd Blanche and Bill Essayli, the first assistant U.S. attorney for the Central District of California.
“Every minute of processing that occurs without segregating the ballots of suspected non-eligible voters causes untraceable disenfranchisement and dilution of the votes of United States citizens,” the filing said.
The department went to the appeals court after U.S. District Judge David Carter did not rule by a Thursday deadline it had requested. It treated his silence as a “constructive denial,” NBC News reported.
Carter has scheduled a hearing for Tuesday on the department’s request for a temporary restraining order. It is unclear whether the appeals court will act before then.
California called the appeal premature in a Friday filing, Democracy Docket reported. “The TRO Application has not been denied, either by court order or constructively, and the Court has not failed to rule,” the state said.
State officials also argue that county election offices lack the authority and the access to federal records needed to verify a voter’s citizenship.
They say ballots that have already been processed cannot be pulled back, because a ballot is separated from its envelope once the signature is verified. Los Angeles County alone had processed 331,000 ballots, according to court records cited by Fox.
‘That’s the Floor’
Essayli has said federal investigators have evidence that the 20,000 people received mail ballots in October.
“We’re not asking California to take any drastic steps other than to sequester the ballots from the suspected noncitizens,” he told Fox News Digital on Wednesday. “We believe it’s at a minimum of 20,000. That’s the floor.”
Essayli has also sparred with Gov. Gavin Newsom on social media over the state’s citizenship checks. Newsom has defended the integrity of California’s elections and said the state is following the law.
Essayli’s office filed the lawsuit Oct. 15, roughly two weeks after California began mailing ballots.
The Justice Department is considering suits against more states as part of its push to remove noncitizens from voter rolls, a department official told NBC News. Democratic Party leaders have sued to block what they call federal overreach into state-run elections.
Election law professor Rick Hasen, a critic of the suit, wrote that the appeals court’s Saturday deadline was “already a huge concession to the government in a case where there is no appealable order.”
Election Day is Nov. 3.
Content created by Conservative Daily News and some content syndicated through CDN is available for re-publication without charge under the Creative Commons license. Visit our syndication page for details and requirements.
