It Looks Like the Dispute Over 20,000 'Likely Noncitizens' on CA's Voter Rolls Is Going to SCOTUS

The dispute over what should happen to the vote-by-mail ballots of more than 20,000 "likely noncitizens" on California's voter rolls could be quickly headed to the Supreme Court after the 9th Circuit denied the Department of Justice's emergency motion for injunctive relief Friday afternoon. That motion was filed after District Judge David O. Carter denied the DOJ's application for a restraining order, in which it requested that state and local elections officials be ordered to segregate ballots returned from people on that list until citizenship could be determined, on Wednesday.

(For a more full recitation of the sequence of events, see: DOJ Details How It Found 20,000 Likely Noncitizens on CA Voter Rolls, Seeks Emergency Court Order, 9th Circuit Orders CA to Respond to DOJ's Emergency Motion in Alleged Noncitizen Ballot Case, CA Ballot Hearing: Judge Refuses DOJ Witnesses, Suggests Counting Ballots and Prosecuting Later, Clinton Appointed Judge: Not Allowing Illegal Alien Votes Is Like Disenfranchising Black Americans)

Like the ruling entered earlier this week, Friday's was a 2-1 ruling, with Judges Mark J. Bennett and Gabriel P. Sanchez in the majority and Judge Patrick Bumatay dissenting. Bumatay, who had the only reasonable comments in the 9th Circuit's previous denial, noted that both state and federal law prohibit noncitizens from voting in elections in California, and that according to an investigation by the Department of Justice, 20,000  "likely noncitizens received mail ballots for the upcoming election, then said:

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. 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 then reminded readers that the federal government has a long history of stepping in to protect voting and civil rights "by enjoining state action that violates the law," and that common sense dictates that the federal government shouldn't have to sit on its hands while a state allows the violation of federal law. He then cited The Federalist No. 59, which recognized “an exclusive power of regulating elections for the national government, in the hands of the State legislatures, would leave the existence of the Union entirely at their mercy. They could at any moment annihilate it.”

Bumatay argued:

This is all the more true given California’s lax system for verifying citizenship. During oral argument, Los Angeles County, California’s most populous county, could give no evidence that it independently verifies the citizenship of its voters. Instead, it apparently relies only on applicants’ attestation of their citizenship. Further, the County claimed that nearly 40% of a sample of suspected noncitizens from the federal government’s list had been born in the United States. But when the federal government ran the same sample through its systems, it confirmed that none were born here. And the County doesn’t rebut the federal government beyond the say-so of the potential voters themselves. Now California says it can do nothing to prevent illegal voting. That undermines the federal government’s interest in promoting election integrity and preventing the dilution of lawful votes.

It is expected that the Department of Justice will now appeal directly to the United States Supreme Court.

The full order can be read below.

Editor’s Note: Republicans are fighting for election integrity by requiring proper identification to vote. It's common sense, yet Democrats are spreading lies about the impact of such a measure. 

Help us continue to call out these lies by joining RedState VIP and using promo code FIGHT to receive 60% off your membership.