LOS ANGELES (AP) — On Monday, an appeals court chose not to determine whether California election officials are permitted to count approximately 20,000 ballots that the Justice Department claims belong to noncitizen voters.
This ruling positions the federal government and state officials for another legal confrontation on the issue scheduled for Tuesday in front of a federal district judge, creating a very tight timeframe for the federal government to persuade California to isolate these votes ahead of the November 3 elections.
The Republican administration filed a lawsuit against election officials in the strongly Democratic state in mid-October, accusing them of not adhering to a 48-hour deadline to review a list of 20,000 individuals it claimed were likely noncitizens registered on the state’s voter rolls. The administration requested the judge to prevent the state from counting those ballots until immigration status verifications could be conducted.
After a district judge scheduled a hearing on the matter for October 27, the federal government appealed to the 9th Circuit Court, asserting that a quicker resolution was necessary to avoid the continued counting of the ballots.
However, two of the three judges on the 9th Circuit Court dismissed that argument on Monday, stating that the federal government “failed to allow the district court adequate opportunity to consider” their initial request to sequester the disputed ballots.
The Justice Department did not immediately reply to an emailed inquiry.
