Fed Counter After Judge Dismisses Illegal Ballots Case

Voter registration table with forms, pens, and informational materials — Photo: Joseph Sohm / Shutterstock

A federal appeals court just told the Trump administration it moved too fast in trying to stop California from counting 20,000 disputed mail ballots.

Quick Take

The Justice Department sued California, claiming more than 20,000 registered voters are likely noncitizens
The Ninth Circuit sent the case back to the district court instead of blocking the ballots
Los Angeles and Santa Cruz county reviews found many flagged names were U.S.-born or no longer registered
A district judge separately denied the federal request to set aside the ballots before counting

What the Justice Department Claims It Found

The Department of Justice sued California on October 15, saying it had worked with the Department of Homeland Security to identify “more than 20,000 people who are likely aliens” registered to vote in the state. The department wanted those ballots pulled aside before officials opened or counted them, arguing that once a ballot gets processed, there is no way to undo the count. Two Homeland Security employees submitted declarations backing the claim.

California got the list and just two days to respond, according to reporting on the case. That tight window left little room for the state to check names before the Justice Department demanded action. The list reportedly arrived on a thumb drive with its password written on a sticky note, a detail that added to the sense of a rushed, improvised process rather than a careful legal action.

The Appeals Court’s Procedural Rebuff

A divided Ninth Circuit panel declined to block the ballots, ruling 2-1 that the Justice Department had jumped to the appeals court before giving the district judge a real chance to decide the matter. The department argued the delay itself amounted to a denial, but the majority disagreed, sending the fight back down. One judge questioned whether the Justice Department even had the legal authority to demand this kind of mid-election intervention.

A federal district judge then separately rejected the emergency request outright, warning that pulling ballots now would disrupt an election already underway. That decision left the Justice Department without the broad injunction it wanted, though it does not resolve the underlying question of whether any of the 20,000 names actually belong to noncitizens who voted.

County Reviews Cast Doubt on the Federal List

Los Angeles County checked 200 names from the federal list and reported that nearly 40 percent showed signs of being born in the United States, which officials called strong evidence of citizenship. More than 71 percent of those sampled had no voting history at all, and the county’s assistant registrar called the list “unreliable” based on her preliminary review.

Santa Cruz County ran its own check on 81 names and found most belonged to canceled or inactive registrations, with at least one name that had never appeared in county voter records. These are not abstract doubts. They are specific, documented mismatches reported by the election officials tasked with verifying the federal government’s own data, and they go to the heart of whether the list is accurate.

The Legal Fight Isn’t Over

The Ninth Circuit’s ruling was procedural, not a verdict on whether the Justice Department’s underlying claim holds up. The district court still has to weigh the evidence, including the competing county reviews, before deciding anything permanent. California officials have argued they cannot legally withhold or refuse to count ballots based on unverified allegations alone, and that argument carries real weight under election law.

NEW: The DOJ has now filed notice of appeal to the 9th Circuit after Judge Carter denied its request to force California to set aside ballots from thousands of people flagged as likely noncitizens. https://t.co/qN78YtzLgb pic.twitter.com/U1aMrNkHir

— Hailey Grace Gomez (@haileyggomez) October 29, 2026

County officials also raised a practical problem: once a mail ballot is opened and separated from its identifying envelope, there may be no way to trace it back to a specific voter for later verification. That logistical hurdle matters as much as the legal one, because it shapes whether any remedy the Justice Department wants is even possible without unraveling ballots that were lawfully cast.

Why This Case Matters Beyond California

Noncitizen voting is illegal and should never happen, but researchers who study it broadly agree that confirmed cases are extremely rare once you dig past initial database matches. That does not mean the Justice Department’s concern is baseless. It means the burden falls on getting the data right before asking courts to interrupt an election already in progress, especially given the discrepancies county officials have already documented in this very list.