Code Red: 20,000 Ballots - Court Drops Midterm Bombshell On Newsom's California
A federal appeals court has ordered California to respond to the Trump administration’s emergency request to set aside ballots linked to roughly 20,000 people federal officials suspect may be noncitizens.
The Ninth Circuit’s order, issued late Friday, required California to file its response by noon Saturday. It did not grant the Justice Department’s request or direct election officials to segregate any ballots. California filed an opposition, and a hearing before U.S. District Judge David Carter remains scheduled for Tuesday.
The Justice Department wants officials to keep ballots associated with people on its list separate while their eligibility is reviewed. Prosecutors argue that once ballots are separated from identifying envelopes and mixed into the count, officials may no longer be able to isolate them.
“This is an emergency,” the department wrote in its filing, arguing that delays could undermine protections for eligible voters. Attorney General Todd Blanche and First Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli asked the Ninth Circuit to act after Carter did not rule by a deadline prosecutors had requested. The district judge instead scheduled a hearing for Tuesday.
The requested relief is based on the administration’s claim that ballots may have been sent to people who are not U.S. citizens. Essayli told Fox News Digital that investigators had evidence the approximately 20,000 people received mail ballots during October. That does not establish that any of them returned a ballot or that a ballot was counted illegally.
California officials oppose the request, challenging both the government’s data and its legal authority to direct county election offices. In a preliminary review of 200 names in Los Angeles County, officials found that many had no voting history or canceled registrations, and some appeared to be U.S.-born. Those findings are from a sample, not a determination about all 20,000 people.
The dispute began after the Justice Department sued California on October 15. The department’s emergency appeal argues that the state’s processing procedures could make it impossible to separate ballots associated with the listed individuals before they are counted. Los Angeles County officials have processed about 331,000 ballots overall, according to court records cited in reporting; that figure does not indicate how many, if any, came from people on the federal list.
Essayli has said the 20,000 figure is a minimum.
“We believe it’s at a minimum of 20,000.”
“That’s the floor.”
The administration argues that identifying and reviewing potentially ineligible ballots is necessary to protect lawful votes. California officials say election offices cannot reliably verify citizenship using the federal information provided and have raised concerns about the practical and legal consequences of separating ballots based on the list.
For now, the appeals court has required a response, not ordered ballots held aside. The underlying request remains unresolved ahead of Tuesday’s hearing, while the state and federal government contest how the list should be handled and what authority the Justice Department has over California’s election procedures.