People remove ballots from their envelopes and prepare them for scanning and counting in the vote-by-mail processing board area at the Orange County Registrar of Voters facility in Santa Ana, California, on October 28, 2026. Apu Gomes/Getty Images hide title toggle title i Apu Gomes/Getty Images A federal judge has denied an unprecedented emergency request from the Department of Justice to segregate thousands of California ballots in the elections intermediate. The Justice Department wants California election officials to stop processing ballots belonging to 20,000 people who federal officials say are “probable” noncitizens. California state and local officials have responded that the Justice Department’s list of “probable” noncitizens is unreliable, and a preliminary analysis by Los Angeles County shows that many of those on the list do not have active voter registrations. Officials also claim that reserving ballots just days before Election Day, when voting and processing of mail-in ballots are already underway, would be illegal and unworkable and would disenfranchise eligible voters. In his 26-page ruling issued Wednesday afternoon, U.S. District Judge David Carter, a Clinton appointee, denied the Justice Department’s request for a temporary restraining order to stop processing the ballots in question. “Never before in American history has the federal government, on the eve of an election, attempted to coerce a state and local government to abandon its own constitutional election procedures and bend to the will of the Executive Branch,” he wrote. Carter also expressed concern about taking actions that could disenfranchise eligible voters and create chaos. “Once a vote is segregated, lasting harm occurs,” Carter wrote in concluding his order. “If the Executive can discount votes and threaten to hold elections due to unproven accusations, then our democracy is in danger. This Court refuses to be a party to such a process.” The judge said the federal government can address the problem by continuing to charge people with the crime of illegally voting as noncitizens. Justice Department officials say they have charged dozens of people over the past two months for registering or voting without being U.S. citizens. The Justice Department’s lawsuit in California, filed Oct. 15, is among a series of unprecedented actions the department has taken in states close to Election Day, raising alarms about federal interference in state election procedures. As in California, federal prosecutors on Monday asked Washington state election officials to review a list of 400 registered voters who the Justice Department believes are likely not citizens. And last week, the Justice Department filed an unusual lawsuit in Alaska that seeks to block the state from certifying the results of its Senate race if the Republican incumbent loses because of the votes of an unlikely candidate with a similar name who is accused of being a spoiler candidate. In California’s most recent motion to the court, state Attorney General Rob Bonta, a Democrat, asked the judge to take into account the circumstances of the Justice Department’s lawsuit. “This litigation is a precursor to further interference here in California,” Bonta wrote. “The Court should not be dragged into this chilling degradation of democratic values and constitutional principles.” The Justice Department quickly filed notice that it is appealing Carter’s denial. Ultimately, the matter could end up before the U.S. Supreme Court. “Every day, election officials process more ballots. This ongoing emergency disenfranchises American citizens through dilution,” Bill Essayli, the top federal prosecutor in Los Angeles, wrote in X, adding that he would seek an emergency order from the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. The Justice Department has argued that the issue is urgent because once signatures are verified on mail-in ballot envelopes, the ballots are separated from their envelopes to maintain voter confidentiality, making it impossible to recover an ineligible ballot. Audits and investigations have shown that non-citizen voting is extremely rare. “Tonight’s decision makes clear that the federal government’s actions amount to election interference,” said Jonathan Miller, program director of the Public Rights Project, who is an attorney for Los Angeles County. “The district court unequivocally determined that the Justice Department’s claims are baseless, that it has no basis to bring its lawsuit, and that it has presented no evidence to justify its actions. The administration claims to be protecting election integrity while, at every turn, undermining the federal systems and support that safeguard our elections,” Miller said. Bonta, California’s attorney general, said in a statement that the ruling is an important victory, “but this fight is not over. We will continue to fight to protect California’s elections from unlawful federal interference and get this baseless lawsuit dismissed.” The accuracy of the Justice Department’s list of “probable” noncitizens remains a matter of controversy. A Los Angeles County analysis of a small sample of people on the Justice Department’s list found that a significant portion had said in records that they were born in the U.S. But top U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services official Nicolas Bartell disputed that in recent court filings, writing that his office’s review of those people found that none were born in the U.S. Bartell acknowledged that the review found that four of those people “may be eligible for citizenship.” United States”. He also provided the court with additional details about the federal government’s methodology for creating the list in recent court filings. But political scientist Kassra Oskooi of the University of Delaware, who has been chosen as an expert witness by the voting rights groups intervening in the case, responded in her own statement to the court that she believes the USCIS matching protocol is “probably unreliable.” Carter wrote in his order that the federal government’s protocol “raises significant concerns” and that he could not conclude that its process was credible.
