Federal judge in California denies Trump administration's request to segregate 20,000 suspected non-citizen ballots

A federal judge in Los Angeles on Wednesday denied the Trump administration's request that California separate and delete more than 20,000 mail-in ballots that the Department of Justice (DOJ) says were sent by likely noncitizens. The information was released by Fox Business in a report by Marianne Rafferty.

The DOJ had requested a temporary restraining order that would force the state to segregate and exclude ballots. District Judge David Carter rejected the request. In an excerpt cited by the report, he wrote that the federal government seeks to segregate and exclude more than 20 thousand ballots and that the request violates long-standing constitutional principles, according to which states control their own elections.

For the judge, if the last-minute request were accepted, either party could create chaos in its own political process, and the court refuses to be part of this type of process. According to Fox Business, the Trump administration has already announced that it will appeal the decision.

The government's position and the DOJ's argument

In an interview with the channel, Assistant Federal Attorney Bill Essayli, from the Central District of California, stated that the appeal will be presented and classified the situation as an emergency. In his assessment, American voters are being diluted and the biggest threat to democracy today is a state counting non-citizen ballots.

Essayli said that the government did not ask for the ballots to be excluded, contrary to what is stated in the decision, but only that they be separated, so that it can be verified whether the voters are in fact citizens and, if they are, that the votes be counted. According to him, the urgency stems from the fact that California is processing ballots right now, which could not be undone.

The prosecutor stated that the list was obtained without cooperation from the state and that, so far, 20 thousand cases have been verified, a number that, according to him, should reach 27 thousand soon. He also said that the real numbers would be much higher, because the government does not have all the records for California. The data are statements by the prosecutor and were not independently verified in the report.

California Response

California Attorney General Rob Bonta accused the Trump administration of spreading election conspiracy theories. According to him, there is no widespread electoral fraud, and the thesis would be a narrative that has already been disproved, promoted by Democrats to help Democrats, in the words cited in the report. Bonta also announced new resources to protect state elections, including a warning about possible seizure of electoral materials, guidance to authorities on access to voting locations and a bulletin against intimidation of voters and poll workers.

Essayli countered and said that California's voter list is unreliable and that the state does nothing to verify citizenship. According to him, a sample of 200 people on the DOJ list was checked by the state, and all were born outside the United States.

In the Fox presenter's assessment, the state acknowledged that it had no way of checking whether voters were in the country illegally, while the DOJ presented evidence. The presenter also highlighted that the judge was appointed by former President Bill Clinton, according to the channel, and that he had said that the request would cause havoc in the mid-term elections.

What changes for the market

The dispute has institutional relevance. Mid-term elections define the composition of Congress, which decides on budget, taxes and regulation, issues that affect interest rates, the dollar and the stock market. For now, the transcript does not provide estimates of the impact on assets, and the case will proceed to the appeals court, which maintains legal uncertainty over the Californian electoral process in the coming days.

Automatically translated from Portuguese.