US appeals court scraps ruling that let Trump administration threaten election workers over suspected noncitizen ballots before the midterms
Every court to have ruled on the administration's ballot challenges — district, appeals and now the Supreme Court — has turned the government down.
The Ninth Circuit threw out a three-judge panel's ruling from earlier Monday and directed the case to be reheard by a larger panel, with the decision coming just hours before Tuesday's midterm elections. The Supreme Court had already turned down the Trump administration's emergency request to compel California to separate more than 20,000 ballots cast by people the government suspects may be noncitizen voters. A federal judge in San Francisco had also independently barred the DOJ from warning election workers that they faced criminal prosecution should they decline to set aside the disputed ballots.
DOJ attorney Kenneth Kao acknowledged in court that the government's noncitizen voter list carries a 'high error rate', prompting a judge to question pointedly the reliability of the underlying data.
California Governor Gavin Newsom cautioned federal judges that the DOJ might seek warrants to take possession of ballots, election records and voting machines ahead of certification of results.
