A day before the US midterm elections, the administration of President Donald Trump received a legal setback after the Supreme Court rejected its request to cancel mail-in ballots belonging to more than 20,000 people in California, on the grounds that they may not have US citizenship. The decision came after lower courts rejected the request, and judicial criticism of the Ministry of Justice's moves, while a federal judge in Alaska rejected another attempt by the administration to suspend the certification of the results of the Senate elections in the state.

Published on: 03/11/2026 - 01:52 Last updated: 03/11/2026 - 03:22

The US Supreme Court on Monday rejected a request by the administration of President Donald Trump to force the state of California to cancel mail-in ballots belonging to more than 20,000 people, on the grounds that they may not have US citizenship, one day before the midterm congressional elections.

The court's decision came in a brief, unsigned ruling, without providing any justification for rejecting the request, after lower courts had rejected it last week, and then again on Monday.

The federal government initially accused California of illegally including 190,000 people in voter registers, before reducing the number to 20,000, and submitting an emergency request to prevent the state from sending ballots to them, after the start of early voting.

Last week, Federal Judge David Carter refused to issue an order to confiscate ballots, supporting the position of the Democratic-led California authorities.

Carter considered that "the actions of the Department of Justice reflect a pattern of attempts to interfere in the elections," while Judge James Boasberg believed that the lists provided by the administration of people it suspected of not holding American citizenship were "tainted by defects."

In a similar case in neighboring Nevada, the Trump administration initially announced the identification of 16,000 voters suspected of being non-Americans, but audits reduced the number to 185 people, before it fell to zero.

The Supreme Court's decision comes at a time when Trump has been warning for months about the possibility of fraud in the midterm elections, amid expectations that Democrats will obtain a majority in at least one of the two chambers of Congress.

In a separate judicial development, a federal judge in Alaska rejected a request from the Trump administration to suspend the certification of the results of the Senate elections in the state if the Democratic candidate wins.

The Ministry of Justice had demanded that the results be banned if the current Republican Senator Dan Sullivan lost, under the pretext that the presence of another candidate with the same name on the ballot could lead to a portion of his votes being deducted.

France 24/AFP

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