Trump asks Supreme Court to block 20,000 California ballots before midterms

What the report says

The Trump administration has asked the US Supreme Court to prevent California from counting mail-in ballots from more than 20,000 voters the government says may not be US citizens. According to Al Jazeera, the emergency filing came on Monday, just before Tuesday’s midterm elections, after lower courts rejected the request.

California, which is the most populous US state and a Democratic stronghold, argues that the federal government’s proposed ballot hold could wrongly disenfranchise eligible voters. State officials say the Department of Homeland Security list used to identify the voters is unreliable and may include US citizens. They also say the ballots would be difficult to separate because voting has been underway since early October.

Al Jazeera reported that the Department of Justice wants the state to set those ballots aside until citizenship is confirmed. A federal judge previously refused the request, citing concerns about the quality of the underlying data, and a federal appeals court later declined to intervene.

The case is part of a broader fight over voting rules as Republicans try to keep control of Congress. More broadly, election-law disputes over voter eligibility often raise tensions between efforts to prevent unlawful voting and the risk of blocking valid ballots. Al Jazeera noted that studies and state audits have found noncitizen voting to be rare.