The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit on Friday directed California to respond by noon Saturday to a Justice Department emergency request involving about 20,000 mail-in ballots associated with people federal officials suspect are noncitizens. The dispute is unfolding ahead of the midterm elections.
The order followed an emergency filing the Justice Department submitted earlier Friday. The department had sought action from the appeals court after U.S. District Judge David Carter did not issue a ruling by a deadline the department had requested. Carter had previously been asked to address the matter, and a hearing in his court remains scheduled for Tuesday. The available report does not say whether the appeals court will act before that hearing.
The Justice Department is asking California election officials to keep ballots tied to people on its list separate while eligibility is reviewed. The department argues that those ballots should not be handled with other votes during that review. The request is not described as a final court ruling on whether the individuals are eligible or whether any ballots should ultimately be excluded.
The emergency filing, submitted by Attorney General Todd Blanche and First Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli, characterized the timing as urgent. It argued that processing ballots without separating those associated with suspected ineligible voters could make it impossible to trace their effect and could dilute citizens’ votes. Those statements are the department’s claims in support of its request, not findings reported by the court.
Essayli previously told Fox News Digital that federal investigators had evidence that the roughly 20,000 individuals received mail ballots in October. His office sued California on Oct. 15, about two weeks after the state began mailing ballots, seeking an order to prevent returned ballots associated with those individuals from being counted. Essayli described 20,000 as a minimum estimate and said the requested action was to sequester the ballots, rather than take broader steps.
California election officials have opposed the Justice Department’s demands in court filings. They say county election offices do not have authority or access to federal records needed to establish the citizenship of voters. They also argue that separating the ballots would not be possible where processing has already occurred.
According to the officials’ account, once a mail ballot’s signature is verified, the ballot is removed from the identifying envelope and processed with other ballots. Court records cited in the report show that Los Angeles County alone had processed 331,000 ballots. The report does not specify how many of the ballots in the federal list, if any, have already passed through that process.
The dispute has also played out publicly between Essayli and Gov. Gavin Newsom. Essayli accused the state of using inadequate citizenship-verification procedures, while Newsom defended California’s election safeguards and said the state was complying with the law. The competing statements reflect the parties’ positions; the reported court action so far is an order setting a response deadline, not a determination of the underlying claims.
