Judges throughout the country have dealt the Trump administration a string of losses as it tried to intervene in state-administered elections, including an extraordinary defeat from the Supreme Court on the eve of Election Day.
For weeks now, the courts have largely rejected a sweeping effort by the administration to force states to alter the way they handle their voting processes, efforts fueled by President Trump’s claims that the midterm could be marred by voter fraud, despite little evidence of any such widespread problems.
The administration’s efforts intensified as the Election Day approached, with an emergency appeal to the Supreme Court on Monday asking the justices to force California to set aside 20,000 mail-in ballots that Trump officials claim had been provided to noncitizens. That request quickly failed. In a highly unusual move, the justices denied the request hours after it was filed, without even seeking briefs from the opposing parties.
That rebuff came just weeks after the Supreme Court also rejected the Trump administration’s plan to have the U.S. Postal Service screen mail-in ballots, which would have upended how Americans vote by mail and one critics called an existential threat to democratic elections.
Still, the Trump administration may have succeeded in fueling doubts and confusion among voters over the validity of the election. And it is still appealing several cases.
But the defeats piled up, including in the final 24 hours before Election Day, as lower-level federal judges blocked various administration moves, including a gambit to centralize data on eligible voters and to send California federal data that administration officials claimed revealed noncitizens on the state’s voter rolls.
A district court judge last month also blocked the Homeland Security Department from carrying out field operations focused on uncovering voter fraud in nine states. The administration has appealed.
Throughout the year, judges also dismissed 26 different lawsuits attempting to force individual states to turn their voter rolls over to the federal government.
Though the exact issues differed across the administration’s pre-election courtroom losses, in many cases, judges ruled that the administration was attempting to unlawfully intervene in how states administer elections. The Constitution gives the responsibility of managing elections to the states.
In some cases in recent weeks, judges were also concerned that the administration’s efforts would require courts to violate a principle repeatedly upheld by the Supreme Court, which cautions that federal courts should not disrupt balloting procedures on the eve of an election to avoid confusing voters and elections officials.
If the election results are close, there could be a pile of new challenges. For now, there were two major lawsuits brought by the Justice Department in the final days before the election. The administration sustained several courtroom losses in both.
The Supreme Court ruling on Monday involved California, where after months of drama, harried election officials went into Election Day largely free of any mandates the Trump administration had tried to impose.
The decision left in place lower court rejections of Trump administration demands that California officials screen out thousands of mail-in ballots.
Overnight on Monday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit also agreed that threats by the administration to prosecute election workers amounted to intimidation and should be blocked. That ruling restored a lower court’s ruling that had been briefly suspended.
In Alaska, President Trump ordered the Justice Department late last month to sue to try to pre-emptively block certification of the results in a close Senate race.
Administration lawyers argued that voters could be confused because a man with the same first and last name as incumbent, Senator Daniel S. Sullivan, appears on the ballot, along with Democratic challenger, Mary Peltola. After the suit was filed, The New York Times revealed that an operative connected to campaign and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee were involved in recruiting a candidate the second Dan Sullivan in an effort to siphon votes from the incumbent.
Chief Judge Sharon Gleason of U.S. District Court in Alaska on Sunday reject the effort to block certification, writing that she did not see how the government’s proposed solution to any potential confusion would work given the right to a secret ballot is a core principle of American democracy.
The administration has appealed.
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