California mailed ballots on October 1 to about 20,000 people the federal government says aren't U.S. citizens.
"We believe it's at a minimum of 20,000," said Bill Essayli, the top federal prosecutor in Los Angeles. "That's the floor."
The Justice Department sued on October 15, asking the state to set those ballots aside until officials could confirm the voters are citizens. You might think California would want that too. Instead it's fighting the request in two courts.
State Attorney General Rob Bonta said the lawsuit "borders on the absurd."
Here's what Bonta's side is defending. In a court filing, the Los Angeles County Registrar's Office admitted it has no way to check whether a voter is a citizen. It also said that once a mail ballot's signature is checked, the ballot is separated from its envelope, and after that it can't be traced back to the voter. By the time it said so, the county had already processed 331,000 ballots.
So a ballot from a noncitizen goes into the pile, and it can never be pulled back out.
LA County Registrar Dean Logan's answer was to count them anyway. In a filing to the 9th Circuit, he argued that "counting the ballots in question would not preclude or inhibit any section 611 prosecution," a reference to the federal law that bans noncitizens from voting. In other words, count the votes now and prosecute the voters later.
The vote still stands, though. A prosecution doesn't take it back out of the count.
There are already people to prosecute. On October 19, the Justice Department charged 28 people from the same list, all green card holders, with lying on naturalization papers and registering to vote illegally. Officials say most of them cast ballots.
The case first went to U.S. District Judge David Carter, a Clinton appointee who earlier this year accused the Trump administration of trying to undermine democracy by asking for California's voter rolls. When Carter didn't act on its emergency request, the Justice Department went over his head to the 9th Circuit.
On Sunday, a three-judge panel heard arguments over Zoom. The session ran about two hours, twice the hour it was scheduled for.
It didn't go the government's way. Judge Mark Bennett, a Trump appointee, asked whether the appeals court even had jurisdiction before Carter ruled. He also said the Constitution gives states the right to decide how they deal with noncitizens on their own voter rolls. Judge Gabriel Sanchez, a Biden appointee, asked whether Washington was improperly ordering a state to enforce federal law.
Only Judge Patrick Bumatay, also a Trump appointee, pressed California's lawyer on what happens if nothing is done. "Without an injunction, you will never know," he said.
He's right. If California keeps counting, nobody will ever know how many of those 20,000 ballots were cast by people who had no right to vote.
The panel said it would rule quickly. Carter has his own hearing scheduled for Tuesday.
Neither court may stop this. Bennett said what's left: in California, it's up to California.
California voters can make the state do it. Proposition 39 is on the November 3 ballot. It would require a government-issued ID to vote in person and the last four digits of an ID number on every mail ballot. It would also order election officials to verify that every registered voter is a citizen.
Today, California is one of a handful of states that don't ask voters for ID at the polls. Election officials can't verify citizenship, and the county counting the ballots says it can't take one back once it's counted.
Comments are closed.