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LOS ANGELES, United States: A federal judge on Wednesday rejected the US Department of Justice\u2019s efforts to set aside the ballots of more than 20,000 California voters it said might not be citizens, slamming the move as brazen pre-election \u201cinterference.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n The case sparked an uproar ahead of the November 3 midterms, in which President Donald Trump\u2019s Republican Party is at risk of losing its control of Congress, and appears to represent another attempt to cast doubt on electoral results.<\/p>\n Democratic Party leaders have sued the Trump administration over the request, accusing Republicans of aiming \u201cthreats and intimidation\u201d at state and local officials before the vote.<\/p>\n US District Judge David O. Carter agreed, refusing to order the seizure of the ballots and siding with the government of Democratic-led California.<\/p>\n \u201cNever before in American history has the federal government, on the eve of an election, sought to coerce a state and local government to abandon their own Constitutional elections procedures and bend to the will of the Executive Branch,\u201d Carter wrote in his decision.<\/p>\n \u201cConstitutional rights and our democracy are at stake. The public interest favors their protection,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n Those registered on California\u2019s voter rolls \u201cmust not be deprived of a core right merely because of unfounded allegations stemming from a procedure rife with uncertainty and errors.\u201d<\/p>\n The federal government in recent months had accused California of having 190,000 illegal voters on its books.<\/p>\n It recently revised the figure to 20,000 and filed an emergency lawsuit about 10 days ago \u2014 after early voting had begun \u2014 to stop the state from sending ballots to them.<\/p>\n A similar controversy arose in neighboring Nevada, where the allegations fizzled. The Trump administration had initially identified 16,000 non-citizen voters there, but after verification procedures that number dropped to 185 \u2014 and then to zero.<\/p>\n \u201cThe DOJ\u2019s actions are indicative of a broad, ongoing pattern of attempted election interference by federal officials,\u201d Carter wrote in his decision.<\/p>\n For months, Trump \u2014 who has never acknowledged his own election defeat by Joe Biden in 2020 \u2014 has been claiming that there will be fraud in this year\u2019s midterms.<\/p>\n Studies repeatedly show that while rare cases of voter fraud exist, such incidents are miniscule and do not influence election results.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n