Judge to Rule by Nov. 3 on Trump Administration Election Demands to States as DOJ Sues California and Alaska

The Justice Department is spending the final week before Election Day in court. It has sued California and Alaska, and it has made a legal threat against Washington state. A federal judge in Washington, D.C., says he will decide by Tuesday, Nov. 3, whether to stop it.

The lawsuits

Less than three weeks before the election, DOJ sued California, claiming the state has ineligible voters on its rolls. That case is the furthest along. According to Votebeat, it has drawn scathing responses from federal courts.

The department also sent letters to California and Washington asking them to impound ballots from voters DOJ said it had reason to believe were noncitizens. Both states say the lists the government supplied were riddled with errors. Both also say the Constitution gives states, not Washington, the power to run elections.

The Alaska case is different. DOJ sued to block certification of the state's U.S. Senate race if Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan loses by a narrow margin. The department argues that a second candidate named Dan Sullivan on the ballot could confuse voters and taint the result. Sullivan is in a tight race with Democrat Mary Peltola.

Votebeat reports Trump said he personally ordered that suit.

Trump's rally comments

At his Daytona Beach rally Friday night, Oct. 30, Trump called the Alaska situation "voter fraud at the highest level." He accused Democrats of recruiting a candidate with nearly the same name as Sullivan.

"She should be removed from the ballot and prosecuted," Trump said of Peltola, then turned to Attorney General Todd Blanche in the audience. "But he's going to make his own decision," the president added.

Peltola has denied involvement. No charges have been filed against her or against the other Dan Sullivan, and no evidence of a coordinated scheme has been made public.

The court fight

On Thursday, Oct. 29, Chief Judge James Boasberg ordered the administration to provide a list of the states it targeted with demands to change how they run the midterms. That includes demands to set aside specific ballots for extra scrutiny. He set a noon Friday deadline for the information.

The order came in a suit by a coalition of Democratic politicians and party groups seeking a ban on federal interference in election administration. Their lawyer, Uzoma Nkem Nkwonta, told the court he worries DOJ sent similar letters to more states and local officials than it has disclosed. He argued that officials elsewhere may have quietly complied.

Judges have so far declined to order states to hand over voter data or segregate ballots. Boasberg said the information would help him judge how far the federal effort reaches and whether he has grounds to intervene.

The administration's position

The White House rejects the charge that it is disrupting the vote. Spokeswoman Lauren Bis said Trump is focused on a free and fair election.

"Radical Democrats refuse to implement basic election security measures like voter ID and citizenship verification, to ensure only Americans are electing America's leaders," Bis said. "No one has done more than President Trump to ensure we have free and fair elections."

The administration also points to prosecutions. DOJ announced 16 charges against individuals this week. The department alleges the cases involve voting on behalf of the dead, casting multiple ballots, and false statements on citizenship applications used to register. The charges are allegations, not convictions.

Last month DOJ unsealed an indictment of a former Postal Service employee. It alleges he threw away mail he was supposed to deliver, including about 300 mail-in ballots to registered voters in Utah.

FBI Director Kash Patel, announcing charges against five people in New Jersey, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, said: "Protecting election integrity for the American people is one of the top priorities for this FBI."

Citizenship verification and clean voter rolls are mainstream concerns. Prosecuting people who vote illegally is the kind of law enforcement most Americans expect.

The timing and the authority

The objections here are about method and timing, not about whether noncitizens should vote. Rebecca Green, a William & Mary law professor who co-directs its Election Law Program, said bringing such claims in the closing weeks "is new" and "threatens to disrupt the process as it's unfolding." She added: "Once people start voting, it becomes a new phase that it's dangerous to venture [into]."

Danielle Lang of the Campaign Legal Center said the administration's conduct is unlike anything seen in federal attempts to affect elections. She also said it is "amounting to relatively little because the federal government is just not in charge of the levers of election administration."

Trump added to the tension this week. Asked whether he would respect the results, he said: "I will if they are honest elections, yeah."

Republican election lawyer Ben Ginsberg dismissed Trump's offer of $1 million rewards for tips leading to election-fraud convictions. "If there was evidence of fraud, uh, they would have found it already," he said. "So I take it more as sort of performance art right before the election."

Ohio State's Ned Foley, an expert on disputed elections, put the odds of the worst scenarios materializing at under 50%. Closer races give mischief more room, he said, and a blowout gives it less.

What comes next

Polls close Tuesday, Nov. 3. Boasberg's ruling on whether to block the federal demands is due the same day. Whether DOJ's Alaska suit survives a narrow Senate result, and whether any state is shown to have quietly complied with the ballot requests, remain open.