Supreme Court denies Trump bid to pause California vote count

The United States Supreme Court has rejected a last-minute request from the Trump administration to intervene in California’s midterm election vote count. The decision ends the federal government's current legal effort to disqualify a specific group of ballots in the nation's most populous state.

The Justice Department sought to have 20,000 ballots set aside. Officials alleged that these votes may have been issued to registered voters who are not US citizens. Two lower courts had already rejected this request before the case reached the Supreme Court.

The timeline of the dispute began last month when the Justice Department sent letters to the California secretary of state and the Los Angeles County Registrar. The letters demanded that the officials sequester the ballots of 20,000 registered voters whom the administration believed were likely non-citizens. Approximately one week later, armed officials from the Department of Homeland Security delivered letters to county officials and employees across the state. These letters threatened criminal charges if the ballots were not segregated.

California election officials challenged the federal government's claims. They stated that the process used to identify alleged non-citizens was inaccurate and that the provided list of names contained numerous errors. Officials expressed concern that eligible voters could be disenfranchised and noted that segregating ballots while voting was still underway was unfeasible. In a 22-page brief, the Justice Department argued that ballots cast by non-citizens could dilute valid votes.

A federal appeals court declined the government's request to segregate the ballots on Friday. District Judge David Carter issued a ruling last week describing the move as indicative of an ongoing pattern of attempted election interference. Carter stated that the federal government had never before sought to coerce a state and local government to abandon their own constitutional election procedures on the eve of an election.

The Supreme Court announced its decision on Monday in a one-line order. The court stated that the application for an injunction pending appeal, presented to Justice Kagan and referred to the Court, was denied. This ruling means the decisions made in lower courts will stand. The vote count proceeds as the midterms approach, which will determine which political party controls the US Congress for the final two years of President Donald Trump's second term.

As of Sunday night, more than six million mail-in ballots had been received in California, according to the secretary of state's office. The state has approximately 23 million people on its voting register. The legal battle forms part of a years-long campaign by the administration to combat alleged voter fraud, a phenomenon that research indicates is extremely rare despite frequent claims by President Trump regarding mail-in voting.