The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals on Friday rejected the Trump DOJ’s last-minute bid to force California to remove 20,000 ballots mailed to non-citizens.
The DOJ immediately appealed after US District Court Judge David Carter, a Clinton appointee, denied the Justice Department’s request for a Temporary Restraining Order (TRO) on Wednesday night.
The Justice Department recently sued California and Los Angeles County over 20,000 suspected non-citizens registered to vote who have already been mailed ballots.
First Assistant US Attorney Bill Essayli said that voter rolls were compared to USCIS immigration, Social Security and passport records.
On Wednesday evening, as expected, Judge Carter denied the Justice Department’s request for a Temporary Restraining Order (TRO).
The Judge said that the Department of Justice can prosecute the individuals.
“There is a clear remedy available. The United States can prosecute individuals according to Section 611, as it has historically and recently done. California also has established procedures to cancel the voter registrations of any individuals proven ineligible,” the judge wrote.
On Friday, in a 2-1 vote, a three-judge panel on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals denied the Justice Department’s request to block 20,000 ballots from being counted.
The three judges included: Majority: Mark Bennett (Trump) Gabriel Sanchez (Biden) – Dissent: Patrick Bumatay (Trump).
“Major concerns remain that granting the United States’s requested relief might result in immense hardship to Defendants and harm the public interest by risking the disenfranchisement of eligible voters and putting the entire tabulation process in jeopardy,” the majority wrote.
Judge Bumatay blasted California, the Clinton Judge who denied the DOJ’s TRO and his fellow judges on the Ninth Circuit Court in a scathing dissent.
“In this case, the federal government believes that 20,000 noncitizens are registered to vote in California. Both state and federal law prohibit aliens from voting in our elections. Yet according to the federal government, those aliens received mail-in ballots for the upcoming election. If California receives these suspect ballots, mixes them with legitimate ballots, and then processes them, the potentially illegal votes will be counted toward the election of our representatives—threatening to dilute the vote of eligible citizens,” Bumatay wrote.
“The federal government proposes a modest remedy—stopping California from mixing the ballots of citizens and suspected noncitizens. This solution would not cancel any vote but would allow time to verify the eligibility of suspected noncitizens. The district court, and now our court, denies this reasonable request,” Bumatay wrote.
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