Court restricts Justice Department’s oversight of ballot processing

The ruling, released Friday evening, also prohibits the DOJ from instructing local officials to isolate or withhold ballots potentially cast by ineligible voters.

This decision represents a further challenge to attempts by the Trump administration to influence local election procedures.

Just hours earlier, a federal appeals court rejected the Justice Department’s petition to compel California to separate disputed ballots from the midterm election, adding to the administration’s recent difficulties in asserting control over state elections.

The administration claims that California mailed ballots to approximately 20,000 individuals who may not be U.S. citizens and seeks to have these ballots set aside pending verification of citizenship. California officials dispute the accuracy of this list, asserting it likely includes many U.S. citizens.

A district court judge previously dismissed this request on Wednesday, cautioning that the Justice Department’s actions could result in voter disenfranchisement.

“As the district court found – and we discern no clear error – there is no feasible way to identify and segregate the ballots of specific individuals without potentially catastrophic effects on the entire system,” the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals stated in its 2-1 decision.

The majority opinion was penned by Judge Mark J Bennett, appointed by Donald Trump, and Judge Gabriel P Sanchez, appointed by former President Joe Biden.

A spokesperson for the Justice Department has not yet responded to requests for comment. However, a prior statement regarding efforts to prevent noncitizen voting asserted, “Federal law prohibits noncitizens from voting. Enforcing that law is not an agenda item. It is the Department’s job.”

With millions of Californians already having cast ballots in the midterm election, which concludes Tuesday, and hundreds of thousands already processed, election officials have confirmed that individual votes cannot be linked back to the original voters.