The state of California gets to tally its postal votes by its own rules after all. On the evening before Tuesday’s midterm elections, the US Supreme Court turned down an emergency plea from the Justice Department, which had asked the justices to make the state hold back about 20,000 envelopes from voters the Trump administration suspects are not citizens. The unsigned order gave no reasons, ran to a single line and recorded no dissenting votes.
The administration had already lost twice in the lower courts. In Los Angeles, District Judge David Carter refused last week to order the ballots set aside, saying the way the government had flagged supposed noncitizens was riddled with doubt and mistakes. On Friday the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals also said no. John Sauer, who argues the government’s cases before the justices, made one final attempt early on Monday. His argument: after the disputed envelopes are mixed in with all the others, nobody could ever pull them out again.
Officials in Sacramento and in the counties rejected the whole idea from the start. They say the federal list contains many mistakes and that pulling ballots aside while voting is in full swing would be both impractical and unfair to citizens who might be wrongly caught up in it. The pressure campaign had included letters, some delivered by armed Homeland Security officers, warning election staff of possible criminal charges.
The scale explains the stakes. More than 23 million Californians are registered to vote, and over six million mail ballots had arrived by Sunday night. President Donald Trump has long claimed that noncitizens vote in large numbers; documented cases remain rare.
With the justices out of the way, the count continues as normal. Polls suggest Democrats are favoured to take the House, while control of the Senate looks like a closer call.
