The Justice Department has filed a last-minute emergency request asking the Supreme Court to force California election officials to segregate up to 20,000 ballots on the eve of the midterm elections. The legal action represents the administration’s final attempt to secure high court intervention before polls open.
The case, styled as United States v. California, centers on a list of names transmitted by the administration to state authorities on October 13. Federal officials demanded that election workers separate the ballots of individuals claimed to be registered voters who are likely noncitizens, placing them in a special pile where they face the prospect of never being counted.
Local election audits, however, indicate that the list is highly unreliable. Following receipt of the federal notice, Los Angeles County officials conducted a preliminary review of a 200-name sample from the roster. Investigators found that nearly 40 percent of those individuals were born in the United States and possess clear U.S. citizenship, while 56 percent had either canceled their voter registrations or maintained inactive statuses. Furthermore, over 70 percent of the sampled individuals have never cast a ballot in California.
The high error rate closely mirrors a similar dispute earlier this year in Nevada, where federal authorities initially claimed 16,000 noncitizens appeared on voter rolls. When pressed to provide specifics, the administration produced a list of only 185 names, every single one of whom state officials subsequently verified as a U.S. citizen.
Legal experts note that even if every individual flagged by the administration in California were to vote, the total would represent a microscopic fraction of the electorate. Nearly 11 million people participated in California’s 2002 midterm elections, making it highly improbable that the contested ballots could alter any electoral outcome in a solidly blue state with no competitive statewide races.
At this stage of the litigation, federal lawyers are not asking the court to outright disenfranchise the 20,000 voters, but rather to mandate a segregation process while citizenship is investigated. Yet legal analysts argue the administration’s underlying arguments lack statutory backing. The request relies on a federal statute that establishes criminal penalties for noncitizens who vote illegally in federal elections, but the provision contains no language regulating state election administration, forbidding the counting of ballots, or empowering federal courts to order ballot segregation.
Opponents of the administration’s bid also point to separate federal protections. Under existing federal law, states are prohibited from conducting systematic voter roll purges within 90 days of a federal primary or general election, rendering compliance with the administration’s initial removal demands legally impermissible. Additionally, the Supreme Court ruled just weeks prior in Scanlan v. Coalition for Open Democracy that federal courts should generally avoid altering election rules on the eve of an election.
Lower court proceedings underscore the logistical hurdles involved. In a judicial opinion, Judge Mark Bennett—a presidential appointee—noted that California officials would struggle immensely to comply with an segregation order even if they wished to do so. State authorities explained that the federal list lacks necessary identification details, local registrars possess no established system for segregating ballots mid-election, and attempting to improvise one risks disrupting the administrative machinery required to run the election as a whole. Additionally, the state lacks the procedural capacity to verify the citizenship status of the contested individuals before the December 4, 2026 deadline for counties to certify results.
While legal hurdles make a favorable ruling from the high court unlikely, observers suggest that a precedent favoring the administration could grant federal actors a mechanism to sow administrative chaos in future election cycles by dispatching unverified lists to state officials scrambling to manage active voting systems.
