The full reportThe full report

Summary

On Wednesday, October 28, 2026, a federal judge in Los Angeles refused the Justice Department's request to make California set aside the mail ballots of about 20,000 registered voters until their citizenship could be checked. The department says federal records show these voters are likely noncitizens. California and Los Angeles County officials say the list is unreliable and that a county review found people on it who listed a U.S. birthplace, which Homeland Security disputes. The judge wrote that the request "would wreak havoc and disrupt the election that is already underway." The department filed an appeal the same evening. The ruling denies emergency relief only; the lawsuit itself continues.

What happened

U.S. District Judge David O. Carter of the Central District of California, an appointee of President Bill Clinton (CBS News), denied the department's request for a temporary restraining order, a short-term emergency court order, in a 26-page decision (order). The department had asked that California "set aside vote-by-mail ballots from likely noncitizens" and not count them until each voter's citizenship was determined (order). It sued California, Secretary of State Shirley Weber and Dean Logan, the Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk (CBS News).

Carter wrote that the department was unlikely to win: it likely lacks legal standing to bring the suit, and the Constitution gives states control over how they run elections. He said its process for building the list "raises significant concerns," noting it had not disclosed its matching rules or error rates, and that the department could instead prosecute anyone who votes illegally, as it has done (order).

That evening, Bill Essayli, the First Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Central District of California, wrote: "The Solicitor General authorized an immediate appeal. We filed our Notice of Appeal and will immediately seek an emergency order from the Ninth Circuit" (Fox News; New York Post).

California mails a ballot to every registered voter, more than 23 million people. More than 3.5 million mail ballots had been returned statewide, CBS News reported, and lawyers for the county said Los Angeles County had processed more than 550,000 (CBS News).

How voter lists are checked against federal records

Most states, California among them, do not ask for documents proving citizenship when someone registers to vote. The person signs a statement, under penalty of perjury, that they are a citizen (order; Texas Tribune). Checking that afterward means matching each name on the voter list to a person in federal records, then reading what those records say about citizenship.

SAVE, the tool many states use. SAVE (Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements) is a 40-year-old Homeland Security system first built to check whether noncitizens qualify for public benefits. In 2025 the department linked it to Social Security records for the first time and let states upload whole voter lists at once. The Solicitor General told the Supreme Court that since May 2025 it had checked more than 65 million voters in 26 states and flagged 28,635 as possible noncitizens. On September 25, 2026, the Supreme Court let the government keep using it while a lawsuit over it continues (NPR).

Why a match can be wrong. A common case: someone gets a Social Security number as a green-card holder and becomes a citizen years later, but Social Security's record still shows a noncitizen. Audits have found Social Security's citizenship data often outdated or incomplete for people not born in the U.S., who often get their numbers before they become citizens (Texas Tribune). In Texas, SAVE flagged 2,724 of about 18 million voters; about 20% were later found to be citizens and reinstated, and 117 were referred for investigation (NPR). A spokesperson for Missouri's secretary of state, Denny Hoskins, called SAVE a valuable resource, and Hoskins said: "No system is 100% accurate, but we're working to get it right" (Texas Tribune).

How the California list was made. Homeland Security says SAVE was not used for this list (CNN). According to sworn statements from federal officials, the government started from a copy of California's public voter list as of August 2025, which has no Social Security numbers (the state refused to hand over its full file). USCIS (U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services) filled in details through a commercial data service, LexisNexis, matched people to immigration files, screened out those State Department and Social Security data showed to be citizens, scored each match and reviewed each one by hand (order; CNN). Kassra Oskooii, a University of Delaware political scientist testifying for voting rights groups, said differences in when and how databases record information can produce false matches even when matching is done carefully; a Justice Department lawyer in a related case said USCIS officers "are instructed not to keep going if it appears that a person is a citizen" (order; CNN).

The Nevada case both sides cite. Homeland Security first said 15,903 Nevada registrants were noncitizens, then said a manual review had confirmed 185. Nevada officials said their records showed all 185 were citizens. A Justice Department lawyer answered that Nevada relied only on voters' own statements that they were citizens, which "we do not think constitutes proof that our list was invalid" (CNN).

How we got here

• July 16, 2026: Homeland Security writes to Secretary Weber that there "may be as many as 190,832 non-citizens registered to vote in California." On July 23 she replies with "serious doubts" and asks how the list was made (order).
• August 5, 2026: A 90-day "quiet period" begins, during which federal law bars states from systematically removing voters before a federal election (order).
• October 13, 2026: The Justice Department hand-delivers a letter and a password-protected thumb drive with over 20,000 names to Logan and gives officials 48 hours to review it and set those ballots aside (order).
• October 15, 2026: The county and Weber reject the demands; the department sues minutes after the deadline (order; AP, via News4JAX).
• October 19–21, 2026: The department asks the court for an emergency order, refiling it on October 21 after the case moves to Carter; on October 21 it also charges 28 people with voting-related crimes, many of them registered in Los Angeles County (order).
• October 22–26, 2026: Carter sets a hearing for October 27. When he does not rule by a noon deadline the department asked for, it appeals, calling his "silence" a "constructive denial." On October 26 a Ninth Circuit panel dismisses that appeal 2–1 for lack of jurisdiction. The majority opinion, joined by Judges Mark Bennett (a Trump appointee) and Gabriel Sanchez (a Biden appointee), said the government's "claimed emergency, at least in part, is a self-constructed one"; Judge Patrick Bumatay (a Trump appointee) dissented: "We should've granted the federal government relief" (order; CBS News; NBC News).
• October 27–28, 2026: Carter holds the hearing, then denies the request the next evening; the department files a notice of appeal (order; CNN).

What each side says

The Justice Department and Homeland Security. The lawsuit says "California made no serious effort" to work with the government and that it "seeks commonplace election relief when a ballot is called into question" (AP, via News4JAX). Essayli told the court, "We're not telling California what they have to do. We're telling them what they can't do," and "What they cannot do is do nothing and proceed to count the votes" (NBC News). He has said the department is not asking to void any ballot (CBS News). On the data, he wrote: "There are no mysterious databases… Voter rolls were compared to USCIS immigration, Social Security, and passport records. We are not changing the rules mid-election, we are enforcing them" (Fox News). The department argues the matter is urgent because once a ballot is taken out of its signed envelope it cannot be traced back to a voter (NPR). A Homeland Security spokesperson said the 20,000 are "a subset of registrants that have gone through the manual verification process so far." A USCIS official, Nicolas Bartell, told the court that none of the people in the county's sample whom USCIS matched were born in the U.S., according to USCIS records, while four "might have a claim to U.S. citizenship" (CNN).

California and Los Angeles County. Secretary Weber, a Democrat, wrote that the department was "demanding unprecedented measures that threaten thousands of Californians' right to vote, based on unverifiable information or methodology that you still fail to explain or provide," and called the demands "an emergency of the DOJ's creation." Attorney General Rob Bonta, also a Democrat, pointed to the drop from 190,000 to 20,000: "What happened to those 170,000? They just got those wrong." Logan said his office cannot withhold or refuse to count ballots "based solely on unverified allegations" (AP, via News4JAX). In a sworn statement, Logan wrote that the government's own filings "describe a bulk data match that began with a voter roster more than a year old" (CNN). Deputy Attorney General Anne Bellows told the court the order sought would be "a recipe for disenfranchisement" (CBS News). The county says 7,035 of the records had Los Angeles County addresses. In a sample of 200, about 43% of registrations had been canceled and about 5% were inactive, so no ballot was mailed, and 71% had never voted (order; CBS News); more than a quarter of the sample listed a U.S. birthplace (CBS News).

What happens next

The department filed a notice of appeal Wednesday evening and said it would seek an emergency order from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit (New York Post). As of October 29, 2026, we found no report that the Ninth Circuit had acted on the new appeal, and we could not check the appeals court's docket directly. The case could go to the Supreme Court (NPR). Wednesday's ruling denied emergency relief only; the lawsuit continues in Carter's court, and Bonta said the state will seek to have it dismissed (NPR). At Tuesday's hearing, Carter said he would appoint a special master, an outside expert working for the court, to examine both the federal and the county data before California's December 3 deadline for voters to fix problems with their ballots; Wednesday's written order does not mention it (CNN). Election Day is November 3.

How it was covered

14 of the 15 outlets on our panel covered it: 5 of 5 on the left, 4 of 5 in the center and 5 of 5 on the right (checked October 29, 2026). The Reel showed the New York Post's headline, "Feds launch immediate appeal after judge rejects bid to stop California from counting 20K disputed ballots." CNN led with "Federal judge warns Trump administration's bid to set aside 20,000 California mail ballots would 'wreak havoc'," and Reuters with "Judge says Trump bid to set aside California ballots would 'wreak havoc' on democracy." We did not find coverage from BBC News. Every outlet's headline, link and date is on the [story page](/stories/2026-10-29-california-ballots-ruling/#coverage). [How we rate outlets and count coverage](/method/).

Sources

The [story page](/stories/2026-10-29-california-ballots-ruling/#sources) lists the main sources; every other source is linked in the text above.

Corrections

None as of October 29, 2026. See the [corrections log](/stories/2026-10-29-california-ballots-ruling/#corrections).