Supreme Court Rejects Trump Bid to Set Aside 20,000 California Ballots on the Eve of the Midterms. Guard the Ballot With Proof, and Get the Proof Right.

The facts come first below. My opinion follows in the section marked as opinion.

Editor's note: This is a new development in a dispute Dock Line covered last week: Judge Denies DOJ Bid to Set Aside 20,000 California Ballots. The case has now reached the Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court on Monday turned down a last-ditch effort by the Trump administration to require California to separate mail ballots received from about 20,000 people the administration claims are not U.S. citizens. In a one-line, unsigned order, the court denied the Justice Department's request for an injunction. There were no noted dissents, CBS News reported.

The court acted so quickly that it did not ask California for its views first, as it normally does in such cases. The administration had filed its emergency request just hours earlier, and lower courts had also ruled against it, NBC News reported.

How the case got here

The administration told state and Los Angeles County officials last month that there were more than 20,000 suspected noncitizens on the voter rolls and ordered that ballots from those people be set aside and not counted until their citizenship could be confirmed. It has since sent letters to all 58 California counties with lists of alleged noncitizens. State and local officials raised concerns about the list's accuracy and the risk that U.S. citizens could be disenfranchised, according to CBS News.

U.S. District Judge David Carter last week refused the Justice Department's request for a temporary restraining order and said the administration's process for identifying alleged noncitizens was "rife with uncertainty and errors." A divided federal appeals court then refused to order the ballots set aside, CBS News reported.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said there was no evidence Congress intended the federal law that bars noncitizens from voting to pre-empt state election laws. California officials had noted that it is already illegal under state law for noncitizens to vote, NBC News reported.

Why the ballots cannot be pulled back

Thousands of mail ballots have already been processed in California. Once officials verify a voter's signature against registration records, the details identifying the voter are discarded before the vote is counted, which means it would be impossible to determine afterward which votes may have been cast by the alleged noncitizens, according to NBC News. More than 6 million mail ballots had been returned in California, CBS News reported.

It is a violation of federal law for noncitizens to vote in U.S. elections, and the Justice Department has brought criminal charges against more than 200 people it alleges voted illegally in past elections. Confirmed instances of noncitizen voting are rare, CBS News reported.

The administration's citizenship checks have faced other setbacks. When the federal government said it had confirmed 185 noncitizens registered to vote in Nevada, the state responded that all of them were citizens, NBC News reported.

Opinion: Guard the ballot with proof, and the proof has to be right

Only citizens should vote in American elections. That is the law, and it is right. Every ballot cast illegally cancels the vote of a citizen who did the work of registering and showing up. A government that takes that seriously is doing its job.

But a serious effort needs accurate evidence. A list that a federal judge found full of uncertainty and errors is not a safe tool for setting aside ballots on the eve of an election. If even some of those 20,000 people are citizens, then the remedy would have silenced lawful voters in the name of protecting them. And when the Nevada list turned out to name citizens, that should have been a warning.

It matters that the Supreme Court acted with no noted dissents. This was not a partisan split. The justices looked at a last-minute emergency request and declined to step in.

Scripture reminds us, "To do justice and judgment is more acceptable to the LORD than sacrifice." Justice in elections means two things at once: keeping ineligible voters out and keeping eligible voters in. A conservative should want both, and should want them done carefully and well before Election Day, not in a rush the day before.

The better path is plain. Verify citizenship at registration, clean the rolls months ahead, prosecute real cases with real evidence, and let the courts and Congress settle the rules in daylight. That is how you build trust in the count. Tomorrow, citizens should vote, and both parties should accept a result counted under the law.