20,000 Ballot Challenge Rejected

Mail-in ballot envelope with thank you message and I Voted sticker — Photo: Scott Habermann / Shutterstock

A federal judge refused to let the Trump administration freeze 20,000 California mail ballots just days before the election, saying the government could not even explain how it built its list of suspected noncitizen voters.

Quick Take

The Department of Justice (DOJ) sued California, claiming over 20,000 likely noncitizens were registered and sent ballots.
U.S. District Judge David Carter denied the DOJ’s request to set those ballots aside before counting.
Carter said the government gave “vague explanations” and could not show its list was reliable.
Los Angeles County reviewed 200 names and found nearly 40% appeared to be U.S.-born.
A federal appeals court later rejected a DOJ bid to speed up the case, calling the move premature.

DOJ Sues California Over Voter List

The Department of Justice filed a federal lawsuit on October 15, 2026, saying Homeland Security Investigations “reasonably believes” about 20,000 noncitizens were registered to vote in California. The complaint said California had mailed these people ballots and asked the court to force the state to set the ballots aside until citizenship could be verified. Federal law bars noncitizens from voting in federal elections, the DOJ noted.

The DOJ did not ask to cancel the ballots outright. Instead, it wanted California to segregate them and run a joint verification process before any were counted. The case landed in front of U.S. District Judge David Carter just as California’s November 3 election approached, putting enormous time pressure on the courts to decide fast.

Judge Finds List’s Reliability In Doubt

Judge Carter denied the emergency request, writing that the government had not clearly explained how it built the list of 20,000 names. He said the DOJ’s explanations raised “multiple questions regarding reliability” and warned that “once a vote is segregated, lasting harm has occurred”. Carter also said he would not make the court “a party to such process,” rejecting the DOJ’s proposed role for federal oversight.

Carter called the DOJ’s request a “monumental change” to California’s election procedures just days before voting ended. He pointed out that prosecutors did not need to inspect ballots to check for unauthorized voting, since returned envelopes already carry the voter’s signature. He suggested ordinary prosecution remained available if the government later proved someone voted illegally.

California Pushes Back On the Numbers

Los Angeles County officials reviewed 200 names from the DOJ list and found nearly 40% indicated they were born in the United States, which officials called “strong evidence of citizenship”. The same review found 71.2% of those 200 records showed no voting history at all. California Secretary of State Shirley Weber said the DOJ gave no underlying data or methodology behind its numbers, and Los Angeles County’s registrar refused to open a password-protected drive from the DOJ over security concerns.

California Attorney General Rob Bonta said counts, recounts, hand counts, and audits all show that voter fraud is “exceedingly rare”. A voting-rights expert who reviewed the matching process separately said the federal screening method used was “likely to be unreliable”. State and county officials argued they could not halt ballot processing for registered voters based on unverified allegations.

Appeals Court Adds Another Setback

The DOJ tried to get the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals to step in before Judge Carter ruled, seeking emergency relief to stop ballot processing. The appeals court dismissed that request, with the panel finding the district court had not been given enough time to issue its own decision. That left the DOJ without any emergency court order heading into Election Day, even as the underlying lawsuit against California remains pending.

A Pattern Worth Watching

Research on past elections shows noncitizen voting happens, but rarely. A Brennan Center review of 42 jurisdictions covering 23.5 million votes found about 30 suspected cases, roughly 0.0001% of ballots cast. That history does not prove this list is wrong. But it explains why courts want hard evidence before freezing ballots from thousands of registered voters just days before an election closes.

Judge Blocks DOJ Ballot Segregation#california #justicedepartment #elections #BreakingNewsUSA pic.twitter.com/ng40uABffz

— JQJO USA Politics English (@teamjqjo) October 29, 2026

Both sides agree noncitizens cannot legally vote. The fight is over whether a government list built without public methodology is solid enough to justify changing how a state counts ballots on short notice. For now, the courts have sided with California, leaving the DOJ’s broader lawsuit to play out long after votes are already counted.