California faces a noon Saturday deadline after a federal appeals court ordered a response to the Trump DOJ’s emergency push to sequester ballots linked to roughly 20,000 suspected noncitizens.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit late Friday directed California election officials to answer the Justice Department’s emergency request seeking to set aside those ballots rather than process them with the rest of the vote, Fox News reported.
The DOJ filed the emergency request earlier Friday after U.S. District Judge David Carter did not rule by a deadline the department had sought. A hearing before Carter remains set for Tuesday.
At stake is whether counties must hold aside mail ballots tied to a federal list of individuals the Justice Department suspects are noncitizens while eligibility is reviewed. Attorney General Todd Blanche and First Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli submitted the filing.
The emergency filing did not say much about speed.
Blanche and Essayli wrote:
"This is an emergency."
They added:
"Every minute of processing that occurs without segregating the ballots of suspected non-eligible voters causes untraceable disenfranchisement and dilution of the votes of United States citizens."
Essayli’s office first sued California on Oct. 15, seeking an order to keep ballots returned by people on that list from being counted. That filing came roughly two weeks after the state began mailing ballots.
In a Wednesday interview, Essayli framed the ask as narrow. He said:
"We're not asking California to take any drastic steps other than to sequester the ballots from the suspected noncitizens."
On the size of the list, he said:
"We believe it's at a minimum of 20,000. That's the floor."
California officials have rejected the demands in court papers. They argue county election offices lack authority and access to federal records needed to check citizenship. They also say separation is impossible once ballots have already been processed.
Under the state’s mail process, after signature verification the ballot is separated from its identifying envelope and handled with other votes. Court records cited in the reporting show officials have already processed 331,000 ballots in Los Angeles County alone.
The New York Post reported Essayli warning that early balloting is already underway while the fight continues, with more than 300,000 ballots processed in L.A. County and early in-person voting open at 123 vote centers. Federal agents have arrested 28 alleged illegal voters charged with fraudulently registering and casting ballots, drawn from the suspected noncitizen list.
Essayli told the outlet the processing is happening in real time and that the biggest fear is California trying to run out the clock until nothing remains that can be reviewed after Election Day.
The pressure has not stayed inside the courtroom. DOJ letters went to local election officials demanding sequestration of ballots and information on roughly 20,000 voters, with a short turnaround and warnings about legal exposure for counting ineligible votes, Breitbart reported.
Some local officials described the demand as an effort to cast doubt on the election. Napa County Registrar of Voters John Tuteur said officials are not changing their procedures and are proceeding with the election while seeking state guidance. California’s attorney general pointed to data problems such as wrong-county names, and a sample review found many canceled registrations, no voting history, or U.S.-born individuals on lists circulating in the dispute.
Gov. Gavin Newsom clashed with Essayli on social media this week. Newsom defended the integrity of the state’s elections and said California was following the law. The posts themselves were not quoted in the reporting.
It remains unclear whether the Ninth Circuit will rule before Tuesday’s district-court hearing, or how many of the listed ballots are still separable versus already mixed into the processed pile. The DOJ’s stated purpose is straightforward: stop ballots tied to suspected noncitizens from disappearing into an untraceable count before citizenship can be checked.
When a state processes hundreds of thousands of mail ballots while fighting basic eligibility review, citizens are right to demand the ballots be held and the list checked before the count is locked.
