Supreme Court Rejects Trump Bid to Set Aside California Mail Ballots
The US Supreme Court declined on 2 November to require California to set aside thousands of mail ballots that the Justice Department had flagged as potentially cast by non-citizens.
Washington1 min read
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The United States Supreme Court on 2 November 2026 rejected a request by the Trump administration to require California to set aside thousands of mail ballots. The Justice Department had identified roughly 20,000 voters on the state’s rolls that it claimed were likely non-citizens. California officials said the list was unreliable and that the ballots should be counted.
The Court declined to intervene on the eve of the midterm elections. The decision left the ballots in the count. Lower courts had previously refused the administration’s request for emergency relief. The case turned on the reliability of the federal data used to flag the voters and on the timing of any remedial action so close to Election Day.
California has conducted elections with widespread mail voting for years. State officials argued that the Justice Department’s methodology produced false positives and that removing ballots without individual verification would disenfranchise eligible voters. The administration maintained that the risk of non-citizen voting justified the precaution.
The ruling removes one potential source of post-election litigation in California. Results from the state will be reported under existing procedures. Similar challenges in other states were not before the Court in this order.
