President Donald Trump speaks at a campaign rally for Sen. Darline Graham, R-S.C., at the Myrtle Beach Convention Center in Myrtle Beach, S.C., Friday, Aug. 21, 2026. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin).
California asked a federal judge Tuesday to reject the Trump administration’s last-minute effort to block or invalidate mail-in ballots submitted by roughly 20,000 state residents.
In the lawsuit, the U.S. Department of Justice said it gave Los Angeles election officials a list of individuals the government described as “likely noncitizens.” Many of those people reside in Los Angeles County.
State and local officials refused the federal government’s request to remove the names from voter registration rolls. Two days later, the DOJ filed suit, accusing California of “knowingly” enabling “unlawful voting.”
The administration also sought a temporary restraining order that would prevent election officials from tabulating ballots cast by voters identified on the federal list.
California pushed back in a 41-page opposition filing, arguing that the administration’s requested intervention comes far too late because the 2026 midterm election is already “well underway.”
California counties began mailing ballots weeks ago, and the statewide mailing deadline was Oct. 5. That means all vote-by-mail ballots have already been distributed, while many have been returned either directly to election offices or through the postal system.
The administration wants election officials to exclude any returned ballots cast by the approximately 20,000 voters on its list from the final totals. California characterized that demand as both unworkable and lacking seriousness.
“Plaintiff demands that California sequester and refuse to tabulate ballots cast by duly registered voters outside of any statutory procedure and in the absence of any individualized evidence,” the state’s filing says. “Such an order would unquestionably have a devastating disenfranchising effect. Plaintiff does not set out a standard by which citizenship can be ‘verif[ied],’ and concedes that it ‘is not practicable or feasible for the United States’ to carry out that confirmation process ‘before the 2026 election concludes.’”
California’s position is that the federal government has neither confirmed nor offered a workable method for determining which people on the list are citizens.
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The filing further argues that the DOJ acknowledged verification could not be completed before the midterms. If the court granted the government’s request, California says, the practical result would be that the affected ballots would never be counted.
“The risk—if not certainty—of disenfranchisement is plain,” the state wrote. “The public has a strong interest in preventing the irreparable harm of disenfranchisement and late-stage disruptions to election administration.”
California also challenged the way the administration initiated the effort, alleging that the Justice Department “failed to provide state officials” with the underlying “suspect data.”
“Instead, the California Secretary of State received a letter from DOJ demanding that she work to identify the citizenship of an unspecified list of individuals, or else direct elections officials to refuse to tabulate their ballots,” the motion states. “This lawsuit followed less than 48 hours later.”
California described the case as part of what it called “a comprehensive effort to interfere in state elections based on unsupported claims of voter fraud.”
The state’s filing points to the DOJ’s broader campaign to obtain unredacted voter rolls, noting that all 30 states sued in that effort have ultimately prevailed in cases that reached final judgment. So far, courts have decided 26 of the 30 lawsuits, with the government losing each one.
California also cited several other federal attempts to impose stricter mail-voting requirements just weeks before the election. Every court to consider those efforts has rejected them, according to the state.
The filing ultimately questions what the lawsuit is intended to accomplish.
“At best, this litigation is a reckless political stunt. At worst, it threatens to disenfranchise thousands of Californians this election. Plaintiff’s sole claim—that a federal criminal prohibition on individual noncitizen voting preempts large swaths of California’s election administration—borders on the absurd. The relief Plaintiff seeks is as unlawful as it is untenable.”
The post ‘As unlawful as it is untenable’: California tells court that Trump admin lawsuit over alleged noncitizen voting is a ‘reckless political stunt’ in motion opposing injunction first appeared on Law & Crime.
