The U.S. federal magistrate David O. Carter has dismissed the petition filed by the Department of Justice to prevent the counting of some 20,000 mail-in votes in California, corresponding to people whom the Donald Trump Administration considers "probable non-citizens", ahead of the legislative midterm elections next November 3.
In an order to which Europa Press has had access, with which it rejects the temporary restraining order requested by the Executive, the judge warns that accepting the measure would generate serious chaos and interrupt elections already underway. "If the Executive can discard votes and threaten ongoing elections due to unproven accusations, then our democracy is in danger," Carter states, appointed by former Democratic president Bill Clinton.
The ruling stresses that this would be an unprecedented intrusion by Washington into the states' powers to organize their electoral processes. "Never before in the history of the United States has the federal government, on the eve of an election, tried to coerce a state and local government into abandoning its own constitutional electoral procedures and bowing to the will of the Executive Branch," the ruling underscores. The document adds that, with this lawsuit, "the Executive would seek for this court to believe that it reigns as the sole sovereign. But California and its people are sovereign too".
The conflict began when the Department of Justice delivered to the authorities of Los Angeles County and to the California Secretary of State's office a storage unit with data on more than 20,000 alleged non-citizens, demanding that their ballots be set aside within a period of 48 hours after cross-checking information with immigration and Social Security databases.
Nevertheless, the court has called into question the soundness of the system used by the Government. Carter recalls that the Department of Homeland Security initially detected in Nevada almost 16,000 alleged non-citizens in the rolls, a figure that, after the checks, was reduced to 185, and which ultimately turned out to be all U.S. citizens with full rights. Complying with the Executive's demands based on a procedure "riddled with uncertainties and errors" would imply the risk of "depriving American citizens of the right to vote," the judge argues.
The ruling also warns that implementing, a few days before November 3, a mechanism to separate these ballots would force local administrations to design completely new processes, diverting human and technical resources, which would put at risk the completion of the count and compliance with the legal deadlines of the electoral calendar.
The decision of the Los Angeles district court comes just two days after the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals rejected another urgent request from the Trump Administration to speed up this procedure, attempting to bypass Carter’s intervention. In that ruling, the appeals court held the federal Government itself responsible for having created an artificial "emergency" by bringing the case when the opening of the ballot boxes was imminent.