WASHINGTON, Nov. 2 (Xinhua) -- The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday swiftly rejected a last-minute request from the administration of President Donald Trump to temporarily block California from counting over 20,000 mail-in ballots allegedly cast by noncitizens.
The ruling came just hours before polls were set to open for the U.S. midterm elections, after the Department of Justice (DOJ) filed an emergency request earlier that day asking the justices to intervene in the high-profile case.
The department sued California election officials on Oct. 15, claiming that more than 20,000 potentially noncitizen voters were registered in the state. It asked California to verify the names on the list and withhold their mail-in ballots from being counted until their citizenship status was confirmed.
On his Truth Social platform, Trump shared a letter from acting U.S. Deputy Attorney General Trent McCotter saying that "knowingly facilitating" noncitizen voting in federal elections is "unlawful," and threatened that California election officials "will all go to jail for a long period of time!!!"
Several federal judges rejected the DOJ's requests, ruling them unconstitutional.
The Los Angeles Times previously reported that the list provided by the DOJ lacked a sufficiently transparent verification methodology, making it impossible for California election officials to reject ballots based solely on unverified records.
Meanwhile, California Governor Gavin Newsom warned that the federal government could go further by seeking search warrants to obtain ballots and other election materials, potentially disrupting the state's vote counting and certification process. ■
