The decision means the requested setting aside of the ballots was not ordered. The Guardian reported that U.S. District Judge David Carter issued the ruling after the Justice Department sought an order directing California officials to segregate the ballots. The sources reviewed do not establish that the people identified by the administration were in fact non-citizens.
The dispute followed a step by the Justice Department roughly two weeks before the ruling. According to The Guardian, the department delivered a USB drive to election officials in Los Angeles and Sacramento and said it contained the names of 20,000 non-citizens on California’s voter rolls. That description, including the citizenship status of the individuals, remains an attributed claim rather than an independently established fact in the available evidence.
The core outcome is supported across three reports: the federal court declined to require segregation of approximately 20,000 California ballots, and the requested intervention was therefore not ordered. The accounts differ in how they describe the requested action, with reporting referring either to segregating or setting aside ballots and, in one account, to stopping their count.
The ruling places the immediate focus on the limits of the intervention sought by the Justice Department, rather than on a confirmed finding that the ballots were connected to illegal voting. The available material does not establish the court’s exact legal reasoning, and it does not verify the precise number beyond the approximate figure of 20,000.