Supreme Court rejects Trump’s push to set aside California ballots

The Supreme Court on Monday rejected the Trump administration’s push to force California to set aside thousands of ballots from people the federal government claims are noncitizens, a decision that came hours before the final day of voting in the pivotal midterm elections.

The high court refused to immediately intervene in a case involving 20,000 people the Republican administration flagged as likely noncitizens on the largely Democratic state’s voter rolls.

The swift rejection capped a string of losses for the president’s effort to intervene in the election before the counting of ballots to decide who controls Congress in the last two years of his second term. No justices publicly dissented.

Several lower courts also rejected the Justice Department’s push to set aside the challenged California ballots until the voters’ citizenship status could be verified. In Alaska, a judge did not even hold a hearing before dismissing a Trump-ordered suit to prevent a possible Democratic Senate win.

The high court did not detail its reasoning, as is common in emergency decisions. The justices previously rejected Trump’s push to restrict mail ballots around the country in September, even though the justices have sided with his administration in a series of other emergency docket appeals.

The Republican administration has prioritized identifying noncitizen voters this year, despite them being rare. California officials said the administration’s list appeared to be filled with errors and that setting the ballots aside could effectively disenfranchise legal voters.

Also on Monday in Washington, another federal judge ruled against the administration’s efforts to make last-minute demands of California election officials, finding they violated the U.S. Constitution.

“The Executive Branch has likely violated the Constitution’s Elections Clause, which commits authority over election rules to the states and Congress alone,” Chief Judge James Boasberg wrote.
The administration, for its part, said segregating the ballots was a modest request that would eventually allow legal votes to still be counted.

LiveNOW’s Andy Mac has more.

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