US Supreme Court rejects Trump bid to set aside 20,000 California ballots

The US Supreme Court on Monday rejected a last-minute request from the Trump administration to intervene in California's midterm vote count, declining to order that about 20,000 ballots be set aside.

The justice department had asked the court to have California segregate ballots from voters it alleges are likely non-citizens until their citizenship could be verified. The order leaves lower-court rulings in place and essentially ends the administration's bid. It came a day before the midterms, which will decide control of Congress for the last two years of President Donald Trump's second term.

The court issued a one-line order. "The application for injunction pending appeal presented to Justice Kagan and by her referred to the Court is denied," it reads. It gave no reasoning, as is common in emergency decisions, and no justices publicly dissented, according to CBC.

The justice department argued that once the ballots are mixed with others, they could not be identified and removed if the voters were later found ineligible. The administration also called segregating the ballots a modest request.

California officials said the list, compiled by the Department of Homeland Security, is riddled with inaccuracies and could include thousands of US citizens. They said setting aside ballots could disenfranchise eligible voters and that doing so while voting is under way is unfeasible.

Voting in California has been under way since early October. Ballots are mailed to about 23 million registered voters, and hundreds of thousands have been processed. The California secretary of state's office said more than six million mail-in ballots had been received as of Sunday night.

A federal appeals court declined the request on Friday, and a district court had earlier denied it. The appeals panel upheld the district order 2-1. Judge David Carter wrote in the district ruling: "If the executive can discount votes and threaten an ongoing election due to unproven allegations, then our democracy is in danger."

In a hearing on Monday, Justice Department attorney Kenneth Kao agreed with a judge's suggestion that the data has a high error rate, saying the department wanted registrars' help verifying the voters. Bill Essayli, the federal prosecutor running the department's Los Angeles office, said at a news conference he was highly confident those on the list were not entitled to vote, later conceding there may be errors.

California Attorney General Rob Bonta, a Democrat, said the appeal "reeks of desperation and is another attempt to undermine our elections and trample on the rule of law."

Separately on Monday, Chief Judge James Boasberg in Washington ruled that the administration's last-minute demands of California election officials likely violated the Constitution's Elections Clause. In September, the Supreme Court also rejected an administration effort to restrict mail ballots nationally.