Tonight’s bar-tab version: the administration tried to get California to pull aside ballots tied to a federal list of 20,000 people it says may be noncitizens, on the eve of the November 3 midterms. The Supreme Court refused the request Monday, leaving California free to keep processing the ballots under its existing rules. A rare bit of institutional restraint, like finding a clean table at a North Shore clam shack in August.
The underlying list is not exactly a model of precision-engineered government competence. Reporting on court filings found that more than 40% of the names in the federal list did not appear in California’s voter file, and the review identified people likely to be naturalized U.S. citizens. The Justice Department disputed the relevance of that analysis and sought sanctions against the lawyers who published it. AP’s account of the filings is here.
Meanwhile, Chief Judge James Boasberg ordered the administration to stop demanding that California election officials segregate those ballots, writing that the executive branch had likely violated the Elections Clause, which assigns election-rule authority to Congress and the states. AP reported the ruling Monday. That is the legal system’s polite way of saying: maybe don’t roll into a state-run election at closing time with a wobbly spreadsheet and a bullhorn.
There was also an accountability garnish nobody ordered: Maricopa County officials said they raised concerns with DOJ after learning that a federal election monitor assigned to Arizona’s primaries had pleaded guilty in 2016 to hacking Florida election websites. DOJ told the county that it would not send people with election-related convictions in the future. That detail appears in AP’s live election coverage. Terrific. Put it next to the cold onion rings and call it oversight.
Sources
- https://www.bostonglobe.com/2026/11/02/nation/supreme-court-trump-california-mail-ballots/
- https://apnews.com/article/trump-justice-department-voting-noncitizens-california-2cc44eb5ff13d956443eef75eadb24c9
- https://apnews.com/article/7dcb866713d99a2f0beaa9c037d09ddd
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Featured image: US Supreme Court.JPG by Photo by Mr. Kjetil Ree ., CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
