Judge Rejects Trump Administration Bid to Segregate California Ballots

October 29, 2026

Bold Voices

29 October 2026
Curated by the team of Boldvoices

A federal judge has rejected the Trump administration’s emergency request to require California election officials to set aside mail-in ballots associated with roughly 20,000 registered voters whom federal officials say may be noncitizens. The decision keeps the state’s existing ballot-processing procedures in place while the legal dispute continues.

What the court decided

On 28 October, US District Judge David O. Carter of the Central District of California denied the Justice Department’s request for a temporary restraining order. The government wanted state and local officials to segregate the ballots and verify the citizenship of the voters on a federal list before counting those ballots.

The judge warned that changing ballot-handling procedures while voting was already underway could disrupt election operations and risk excluding eligible voters. California officials argued that the federal government had not supplied the underlying data and methodology needed to assess the list’s reliability, which could include US citizens.

Why timing mattered

The ruling came less than a week before the 3 November midterm election. More than 3.7 million Californians had already voted and election officials had processed more than 500,000 ballots, according to reporting by the Associated Press. Officials said identifying and separating ballots already processed would be extremely difficult and could jeopardise established election systems.

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals had earlier declined to intervene in the dispute, dismissing the federal government’s emergency appeal because it lacked jurisdiction at that stage. That procedural ruling sent the matter back to the district court; it did not resolve the underlying merits of the broader lawsuit.

What the ruling does—and does not—mean

The order rejects the administration’s request for emergency relief to segregate the identified ballots. It does not establish that noncitizens are legally permitted to vote: federal and California law prohibit noncitizen voting in the elections at issue. The dispute concerns the legal authority, evidence and procedures for carrying out the requested ballot restrictions during an election already in progress.

The Justice Department has said it will appeal. The case may therefore continue through the courts, and the legal position could change if a higher court issues a new order. For now, California election officials are not required by this denied emergency request to set aside the ballots in question.

What happens next

Attention now turns to any appeal and to the election administration process ahead of Election Day. The case is part of a wider national debate over federal enforcement of voter eligibility rules, state authority over election procedures and the risks of changing those procedures close to a vote.