Austin Sarat ScheerPost
The Trump Administration long ago launched a full-scale assault on American elections. Recall that in the president’s first term, after losing the popular vote to Hillary Clinton, he established the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity. It was charged with identifying fraudulent voting and investigating allegations that Russia interfered with the 2016 election.
It undertook months of fruitless searching. And President Trump disbanded the commission in January 2018.
“Despite substantial evidence of voter fraud,” he explained, “many states have refused to provide the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity with basic information relevant to its inquiry…Rather than engage in endless legal battles at taxpayer expense, today I signed an executive order to dissolve the commission, and have asked the Department of Homeland Security to review these issues and determine next courses of action.”
As the New York Times reported at the time, “In fact, no state has uncovered significant evidence to support the president’s claim, and election officials, including many Republicans, have strongly rejected it.”
But after returning to the Oval Office in January 2025, it didn’t take long for the president again to ramp up his campaign against our electoral institutions. The Brennan Center for Justice notes that “Since the first day of President Trump’s second term, his administration has pursued a strategy to interfere in elections.”
“It has,” the Brennan Center continues, “targeted election officials and others who defend fair elections, purported to rewrite election rules, seized election records, attempted to gain access to state voter rolls, pardoned the January 6 rioters, and elevated election deniers within the government. Many of these actions have been justified by false claims of voter fraud….”
During his second term, the president has directed some of his most intense election-disruption efforts in the state of California. On October 29, the New York Times reports, “The Trump administration.. opened a criminal investigation in its intensifying campaign to prove thousands of noncitizens are on California’s voter rolls, issuing federal grand jury subpoenas to local election officials.”
One day earlier, Federal District Judge David Carter denounced the administration’s previous election interference efforts and refused to aid and abet them.
He said no to the administration’s request that he order California not to count mail-in ballots from people whom it claims are non-citizens who should not be allowed to vote. Cater’s opinion is a well-reasoned and persuasive bit of legal analysis that should not be disturbed by the appellate courts.
It is also a rallying cry for voters who should remember how precious democracy is and how much is at stake on November 3.
Carter’s opinion documents things that Trump has tried to do to mess up voting in the Golden State.
He starts with what happened in July when the Department of Homeland Security wrote a letter to Shirley Weber, California’s Secretary of State, claiming that 190,382 non-citizens were registered to vote. In response, Weber told DHS, “I have serious doubts about the reliability of your data and accuracy of your claims, since my office has not shared our statewide voter registration list with DHS or any other federal agency or official. Indeed, state law prohibits sharing voters’ sensitive information, including social security numbers, with any person, including the federal government.”
She also requested an explanation of how DHS had arrived at that number and obtained a copy of the state’s voter registration list. Weber received no response.
The administration next turned its attention to Los Angeles County. This time, the Department of Justice contacted Dean Logan, its Registrar-Recorder and County Clerk.
The DOJ sent Logan a list of 20000 names of people who were “likely noncitizens who were sent a vote-by-mail ballot” for the November election. They gave Logan 48 hours to review the list and segregate any ballots received from people on its list.
He responded that he did not know how to verify the DOJ’s list and, even if he could, it would be impossible to complete the task within the allotted time.
The DOJ sued.
In his October 28 opinion, Judge Carter described the suit as “indicative of a broad, ongoing pattern of attempted election interference by federal officials.” He observed that the DOJ has brought 31 lawsuits nationwide seeking access to state voter lists.
So far, the department has won none of the twenty-six that have so far been decided.
Carter pointed out that the administration’s “disproven allegations with respect to non-citizen voting in other states raise further questions of credibility.”
In addition, Carter said that the DOJ has sent letters to every county in California, directing them to “set aside the votes of alleged non-citizens.” It didn’t stop there.
The department threatened to bring criminal charges against those who did not comply with its demands.
We should add to this list of baseless claims and efforts to undermine California’s election system charges of fraud that President Trump made last June in the wake of the state’s primary elections. As ABC News reported, he “complained about the alleged misuse of mail-in ballots and also accused the Democratic Party of delaying the tallying of votes – claims for which there is currently no supporting evidence.”
In his ruling, Judge Carter offered a thorough debunking of the administration’s legal claims.
As he observed, “Defendants do not interfere with the United States’ ability to enforce… (laws punishing voter fraud) by administering an ongoing election in accordance with established state and federal law, rather than assuming new obligations pursuant to a federal criminal law that are not responsible for enforcing.”
He pointed out that what the Trump Administration was asking him to do would violate several federal statutes, including the National Voter Registration Act of 1993, the Voting Rights Act of 1970, and the Civil Rights Act. Carter argued that the people whom the administration is targeting are “naturalized citizens.”
But what is most noteworthy about Carter’s opinion is not just its legal analysis.
The judge offered a history lesson and an argument about what is at stake in the administration’s election interference efforts. “Never before in American history,” he wrote, “has the federal government, on the eve of an election, sought to coerce a state and local government to abandon their own constitutional election procedures and bend to the will of the executive branch.”
“Every generation in our history has witnessed repeated clashes between those who seek to limit access to the ballot and those who fight to ensure it… If Plaintiff’s last-minute requests for relief were granted…(o)ver 20,000 registered Californians would potentially lose the right the generations of Americans have fought to preserve.”
Carter ended by stating, “If the executive can discount votes and threaten the ongoing election due to unproven allegations that our democracy is in danger, and adding, “The Court declines to be a party to such a process.”
He was right to issue that warning and to say he wanted no part of the administration’s anti-democratic efforts. On November 3, Americans should use their votes to make clear that we won’t be a party to them either.
Austin Sarat
Austin D. Sarat is the William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Jurisprudence and Political Science at Amherst College. He is an internationally renowned scholar whose interdisciplinary work examines law in relation to culture, violence, and the liberal arts. His academic foundation includes a B.A. from Providence College (1969), an M.A. (1970) and Ph.D. (1973) from the University of Wisconsin, and a J.D. from Yale Law School (1988). He has also received honorary degrees, including an LL.D. from Providence College (2008) and an A.M. from Amherst College (1984). Sarat has also been awarded the Jeffrey B. Ferguson Memorial Teaching Prize at Amherst in 2022 and the Ronald Pipkin Service Award as well as many others.
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