Supreme Court denies Trump bid to set aside 20,000 California ballots on eve of midterms

The US Supreme Court has rejected a last-minute request by the Trump administration to intervene in California's midterm election vote count, declining to order the state to set aside roughly 20,000 ballots that the justice department alleged may have been issued to non-US citizens. The court announced its decision on Monday in a one-line order denying the justice department's request for an injunction. "The application for injunction pending appeal presented to Justice Kagan and by her referred to the Court is denied," the order read. The ruling means decisions by two lower courts against the government will stand and essentially ends the administration's bid to disqualify the ballots. The decision came on the eve of the midterm elections, which will determine which party controls Congress during the final two years of President Donald Trump's second term. According to court documents, the justice department sent letters last month to the California secretary of state and the Los Angeles County registrar demanding that they set aside the ballots of 20,000 registered voters whom the administration considered likely non-citizens. About a week later, armed officials from the Department of Homeland Security delivered letters to county officials and employees across California threatening criminal charges if the ballots were not sequestered. In a 22-page brief, the justice department argued that ballots cast by non-citizens could "debase or dilute valid votes". On Friday, a federal appeals court declined the government's request to segregate the ballots. California election officials questioned the accuracy of the government's claims and said the list of names provided was riddled with errors. They warned that eligible voters could be disenfranchised and argued that segregating ballots while voting was underway was unfeasible. California is the most populous state in the country, with about 23 million people on its voting register, and more than six million mail-in ballots had already been received as of Sunday night, according to the secretary of state's office. The push is part of a years-long campaign by Trump and his administration against alleged voter fraud, which research has shown to be extremely rare. The president has repeatedly claimed that Democrats steal elections by allowing immigrants to vote illegally, and has blamed much of it on the mail-in voting permitted in many Democratic states. Last week, District Judge David Carter issued a scathing ruling in which he said the government's move in California was indicative of an "ongoing pattern of attempted election interference" by the Trump administration. "Never before in American history has the federal government, on the eve of an election, sought to coerce a state and local government to abandon their own constitutional elections procedures and bend to the will of the executive branch," he wrote. Additional reporting by David Willis.