votes

After President Trump’s unfounded claim that California’s slow vote count during the June primary indicated cheating by Democrats, state and local elections officials made changes to speed things up — in part to dispel any questions about this month’s crucial midterm elections.

The state of California allocated $29 million for new equipment, election staffing and voter awareness campaigns statewide, about $6 million of which went to Los Angeles County. The county, which opened a massive new ballot processing center in 2024, announced it would shift to around-the-clock ballot counting in the days after the Nov. 3 election and used some of its state funding to purchase a third mail ballot processing machine.

A full analysis of the impacts of those efforts statewide has not been completed, and ballot counting is still underway. But one week after the polls closed, officials in L.A. County and independent election observers say the efforts clearly paid off.

A statewide report on unprocessed ballots as of 5:41 p.m. Tuesday found that L.A. County had processed about 99% of nearly 3.2 million ballots cast in the county, with just 37,800 ballots still to process. That’s well ahead of where it was at the same point after other recent elections.

Kim Alexander, president of the nonprofit, nonpartisan California Voter Foundation, which has for years tracked ballot processing, said that compared to L.A. County having processed 96.9% of ballots a week after the 2024 general election and just 73.3% of ballots a week after the 2022 general election. She said a similar 99.3% of ballots had been counted by the county a week after the June primary — but nearly a million fewer people voted in that election.

Alexander said L.A. County was also well ahead of the state average for ballots processed seven days after an election, which stood at 92.8% processed a week after the June primary, 84.2% processed a week after the 2024 general election, and 71.6% processed a week after the 2022 general election.

On Tuesday, L.A. County, the most populous county in the state, was outpacing other big counties, such as San Diego and Orange counties, which had both processed over 1 million ballots but had 185,000 and 116,660 left to count late Tuesday, respectively. It was also outpacing some of state’s smaller counties, such as Humboldt, which had counted more than 25,000 ballots but had nearly the same amount left to process.

L.A. County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk Dean Logan said the success of this election was a result of the state funding, which “came very late in the process,” but also years of support from the county — especially for the new $10 million, 144,000-square-feet processing facility.

Before the new facility was opened, the county processed ballots in multiple different locations. “And even on election day, we had to stop processing vote by mail ballots so that we could process the ballots coming in from the vote centers,” Logan said. “Now we have a space that is designed and — provided we have the resources to staff it — we can keep those operations going on simultaneously.”

The county’s purchase of a third mail sorting machine, Logan said, also helped workers to more quickly process the massive influx of ballot envelopes that voters drop off at vote centers or in drop boxes on election day.

Logan said the count this election also may have been quickened slightly by more voters returning their ballots earlier in the process and voting in person.

Alexander called the quickened count, during an election with high turnout and a long and complicated state ballot, “remarkable” — and all the more so given the tremendous amount of pressure the Trump administration was putting on L.A. County.

“I feel this vote count in L.A. and across the state is remarkable in that it appears to be going smoothly and in L.A. clearly very efficiently, but it’s also remarkable given all of the hurdles that we had to overcome to conduct this election,” Alexander said.

The day after California’s primary election in June, President Trump took to social media to allege — with zero evidence — that Democrats were “trying to STEAL THE GOVERNOR OF CALIFORNIA PRIMARY, AND THE MAYOR OF LOS ANGELES, PRIMARY, AWAY FROM TWO GREAT REPUBLICAN CANDIDATES.”

“Votes are all tied up. May not be in for weeks. Under investigation by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Los Angeles,” Trump wrote. “Why the vote counting DELAY???”

While dismissing such claims as baseless and a threat to democracy, Gov. Gavin Newsom in May acknowledged that the longer it takes to count votes, the “more mis- and disinformation spreads.” That’s why, he said, state lawmakers passed legislation in 2025 to speed up the process.

“We must do all that we can to tabulate votes quickly and accurately,” Newsom said in a letter to elections officials. “Time is of the essence in preventing election lies from taking hold.”

Other states do count votes and call elections faster than California, though California officials say that is for several reasons.

California counts far more ballots than any other state, provides voters with more options for voting than other states, provides a grace period for counting ballots postmarked by election day but received in the days that follow, and provides opportunities for voters whose ballots have an issue — such a signature discrepancy — to cure them in the days after an election.

None of those explanations have convinced Trump, however. And his comments criticizing California were not just bluster.

Instead, they were part of a much larger, highly-coordinated effort by his administration to wrest control over voting processes in the state to institute stricter rules and new federal oversight for mail ballots, stricter requirements around voter ID and proof of citizenship and stricter rules for when ballots must arrive to county officials in order to be counted, Alexander said.

Federal courts, including the Supreme Court, shot down all of those efforts. The Supreme Court also rejected federal demands that California and L.A. County halt the counting of 20,000 ballots the Trump administration alleged could be from noncitizens — but not before Justice Department officials sent letters to county elections officials across the state, threatening them with criminal prosecution if they counted those ballots. Litigation was playing out right up until election day.

Logan said the judicial branch played a pivotal role in defending California’s elections from the Trump administration, and prevented an election disaster. He and other county officials said in court filings that, had they been forced to begin segregating the 20,000 flagged ballots in the midst of the election, “chaos” would have ensued.

Logan also said that the success of this election “is not guaranteed going forward,” and should be understood by state and county officials as further proof that investments in elections in L.A. County and across the state are not only beneficial but critical moving forward — particularly ahead of 2028, when the Trump administration can be expected to target California once more.

“We will continue to be a target of the administration,” he said.

A week after polls closed, Jose Ugarte and Estuardo Mazariegos are still locked in a tight race to see who will succeed Curren Price for the Los Angeles City Council’s 9th District seat.

Ugarte was leading Mazariegos by just 156 votes, 19,200 to 19,044, according to the latest tally released by the Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder Tuesday night.

Tuesday was the last day for mail-in ballots to be counted, said Mike Sanchez, spokesperson for the office. Sanchez said he couldn’t estimate how many votes remained to be counted.

Because of the Veterans Day holiday Wednesday, the next vote tally will not be released until Friday, he said.
District 9 encompasses South L.A. neighborhoods, the Convention Center and USC.

The current councilmember, Price, must leave office because of term limits and is currently facing charges of embezzlement and conflict of interest and he has denied wrongdoing. Price has endorsed Ugarte, whose platform includes protecting city residents from federal immigration enforcement and the Trump administration. Mazariegos is backed by the L.A. chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America. He has worked as a community organizer for decades and said he’s running to improve quality of life in the city, including by making housing more affordable and spending money on basic services other than policing.

Mazariegos’ campaign made claims this week against the Ugarte campaign and shared images of unsealed and sealed ballots, alleging the ballots were collected during “an Ugarte canvassing operation.”

“Taking people’s ballots, filling them out, and not following legal voter assistance guidelines in a district that has faced so much disenfranchisement is disgusting,” Mazariegos said in a statement.

Among their claims, the campaign shared a photo of a USC student volunteering for Ugarte’s campaign delivering a stack of ballots to a drop box.

The registrar-recorder’s office forwarded the complaint to the district attorney’s office for review, Sanchez said. Sanchez said the photo of the student, which circulated online, didn’t raise alarms because California law allows voters to authorize another person to return their completed ballots.

The district attorney’s office said it was looking into the matter.

Ugarte said in a statement that the allegations made by Mazariegos’ campaign “are categorically false and defamatory.”

The 9th District seat is one of two council races determined in the Nov. 3 election. Barri Worth Girvan declared victory in the west San Fernando Valley’s 3rd District seat Friday night, after the latest vote tally showed her widening her lead over rival Tim Gaspar, with 51% of the vote to Gaspar’s 48%.

“I will bring competence, transparency, follow-through, and ethical leadership to City Hall, which Angelenos deserve and too often do not get,” Worth Girvan said in a statement.

Worth Girvan will replace Councilmember Bob Blumenfield, who is leaving office because of term limits. The 3rd District seat includes Woodland Hills, Reseda and Canoga Park.

Before entering the race, Worth Girvan was L.A. County Supervisor Lindsey Horvath’s district director for three years, handling constituent services on the Westside and in the Valley, and has spent nearly 20 years working in public service. Gaspar is a former insurance company owner who had been backed by business groups.

A jubilant Nithya Raman stood before cheering supporters at her election night party Tuesday, giving a speech that fell just shy of declaring victory, but one that urged the crowd at the Greek Theatre plaza to hold off on the celebrations for now.

“I’m hopeful. I’m very hopeful,” Raman told a raucous crowd fueled by tequila and chicken tenders. “I’m also really superstitious. So we’re all just going to be cool, okay? Very cool.”

The initial vote tally Tuesday had Raman slightly behind incumbent Karen Bass in the race for Los Angeles mayor, but analysts were quick to point out that this was actually a strong indication that Raman would win. Polls have consistently shown Raman is heavily favored by younger voters, who tend to vote later than older people and whose late-arriving ballots are considered likely to turn the tide in her favor.

“The expectation is that once Nithya Raman starts gaining votes she will continue to gain votes. There is not going to be a seesaw. It is likely going to be pretty unidirectional,” said Paul Mitchell, who heads the polling data firm PDI. “I don’t call races. But if that expectation holds true then there is no reason to expect that Raman is going to do anything but gain votes from here.”

Votes were still being counted the day after the election, but by early Wednesday morning, Raman had taken a slight lead over Bass.

“Nithya Raman is going to win. She’s going to be our next mayor,” said a gleeful L.A. County Supervisor Lindsey Horvath, who has clashed with Bass and endorsed Raman a few weeks before the election.

“It’s over,” declared Estevan Montemayor, who ran an independent expenditure group supporting Raman.

Across town at the Loews Hollywood Hotel, Bass projected confidence on Tuesday night that she would triumph in her reelection bid.

“Let me just say it takes a while to count the vote in our city, but pretty soon we shall know and I am confident with all the work that is done here that we will achieve victory,” the mayor said at the L.A. County Democratic Party’s election night watch party.

The pattern of Raman gaining votes would follow what occurred in the June 2 primary, when former reality TV star Spencer Pratt was leading Raman for second place on election night, only for Raman to claw her way back day after day, until she finally overtook him five days after the election.

Raman and Bass were locked in a tight race up until election day, with final polling in the race showing the second-term council member and the incumbent mayor each with support from 40% of Angelenos while 19% of the electorate was still undecided.

But a blue wave across the country that toppled Republicans in the U.S. Senate and the House of Representatives also appeared to be buoying Raman’s campaign against Bass from the left.

Raman ran with the backing of the Democratic Socialists of America, the leftist organization that endorsed Mayor Zohran Mamdani in New York, and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez (D-NY) in Congress, among others.

Bass, meanwhile, ran on a public safety message that was meant to convince moderates and more conservative voters that she was a better alternative to Raman.

Raman also cast herself during the race as a hopeful technocrat who wanted to deliver “A City that Works,” her campaign slogan, promising to make L.A. a city that fixes broken sidewalks and potholes and repairs darkened streetlights in a more timely manner.

“This city’s government has made solving problems look impossible for so long that I heard form people across this city who started to believe it was impossible,” Raman said during her more than 20-minute-long election night speech that verged on a victory speech. “Hopelessness can be fatal for a city, but this campaign refused to accept that.”

She then pitched a more hopeful Los Angeles.

“In just one century, Los Angeles built itself into a global metropolis. The gateway to the Pacific. A center of ingenuity and invention. The cultural capital of the entire planet,” she said. “That ambitious Los Angeles, that joyful Los Angeles, that creative Los Angeles, that entrepreneurial Los Angeles, that inclusive Los Angeles, is the Los Angeles that this campaign was born to fight for.”

Raman’s position on the precipice of ascending to the mayoralty would have seemed nearly unthinkable at the start of the year, when Bass’ challengers included Pratt, former LAUSD Schools Superintendent Austin Beutner, leftist Rev. Rae Huang and entrepreneur Adam Miller — with Horvath and billionaire developer Rick Caruso also considering bids.

Beutner suspended his bid following the death of his daughter and it seemed Bass, despite low approval ratings, might glide to a second term without a serious challenger in the race.

But the night before the filing deadline on Feb. 7, rumors began swirling that Raman was considering challenging Bass.

“Who remembers in February when it was the end of the candidate filing and no one was, like, running for mayor?” asked City Controller Kenneth Mejia at Raman’s election night party. “I was like, ‘Oh my God,, I’m going to be here again for another four years stuck like this.”

“And then out of nowhere — out of nowhere — Nithya Raman came out of nowhere with the three pointer and she came out of nowhere and was like, ‘I’m running for mayor!’” Mejia yelled during a rollicking speech, as he mimed himself shooting a basketball.

After her speech, Raman asked that her supporters join her on the dance floor, where she shimmied to “Remember the Time” by Michael Jackson, pausing every few moments hug her backers and pose for selfies with them.

Joeseph Fuchs, a representative for the Western States Regional Council of Carpenters, was watching the returns closely as they first came in.

“That’s just the beginning,” he said. “Get ready.”

Another point of data for Raman: “Kalshi says it’s a 95% win” for Raman, he said, referring to the prediction market site.

Bass had a warm reception at her election night party, with supporters chanting “four more years!”

Despite high energy at the party — in part due to the Democrats’ victories in Congress — some supporters understood the lead was far from safe.

“I’m disappointed that people don’t recognize all of the great things she’s done,” said Alton Reed, when asked how he felt about the extremely tight initial results.

Reed, who works for the Communications Workers of America 9003, said he had put in more than 100 hours knocking on doors urging voters to support Bass. He said the positive response he received in the field had made him feel that the incumbent mayor had a strong chance.

Reed said he was not giving up hope that Bass would prevail.

“I’ve been through many close races,” he said. “So we will see what happens.”

City Councilmember Hugo Soto-Martínez said he was “feeling good” about the election results shortly after the initial round of ballots were released Tuesday evening.

Soto-Martínez was one of several elected city leaders who gathered alongside labor union representatives and nonprofit leaders to support Bass at the watch party.

“I’ve been part of many elections and I think when you have a bigger coalition and more people behind you that is going to show in the results,” he said. “That’s why I remain hopeful.”

Nov. 3, 2026 10:52 AM PT

A total of 23,450,456 ballots were issued to registered voters across California. Voters have the option of returning ballots by mail or in a drop box or voting in person. California also allows for same-day registration. The majority of returned ballots will be counted by the end of election night.

After the polls close at 8 p.m. on Tuesday, of those ballots are delivered to the Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk, where they are verified and tallied. County registrars are deliberate and expeditious with the vote count, even as they handle millions of votes under increasing political scrutiny.

Nearly two thirds of registered voters in California are concerned that the federal government might try to stop the vote count before all ballots are counted, an October UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies poll co-sponsored by The Times found.

Each county is responsible for collecting and counting ballots on election night and in the following weeks. The registrars then communicate those results, in batches, to the secretary of state. The counties with the most voters — Los Angeles, San Diego, Orange and Riverside — are prepared to process hundreds of thousands of ballots.

In Los Angeles County, the operation to deliver ballots to the processing center involves eight helicopters flying in ballots from Lancaster, Palmdale, Catalina and other far reaches of the county.

Where the votes still are being counted

The Associated Press surveys the numbers posted by local election officials and estimates how many votes were cast in each race using vote returns and other data.

One factor considered by analysts in calling a race early is where the remaining uncounted ballots are from. For example, if a Republican stronghold still has a large number of ballots to process, it may indicate a different outcome than if the ballots left to be counted were from a more left-leaning area.

The county has 30 days to submit certified results to the secretary of state. The Associated Press’ Estimated Expected Vote Percentage will remain at 99% until the state certifies the election on Dec. 11.

How many ballots have been processed so far

The speed of California’s vote count is determined by the state’s grace period for mail-in ballots. For a week after the polls close, county registrars will continue to accept and count ballots postmarked on or before Nov. 3.

Ballots with certain errors such as signatures on the return envelopes not matching the ones on the voter rolls have the opportunity to be corrected. Voters have until two days before certification to correct, or cure, their ballot.

Counties must provide the secretary of state an estimate of their remaining unprocessed ballots. Once available, The Times will track those reports as counties update the state each day.

No clear winner has emerged from Israel’s election, with nearly 90 percent of ballots counted and both major political blocs falling short of the 61 seats needed to form a government.

The Israeli Central Elections Committee said on Wednesday that it had counted more than five million votes as of 9pm local time (19:00 GMT). Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s bloc is on course to win 53 seats in the 120-member Knesset, while the opposition bloc led by Gadi Eisenkot is expected to secure 48 seats.

Projections from Tuesday’s voting also showed that the Arab parties – the Joint List and Ra’am – could hold a record combined 19 seats.

Final election results could come as early as Thursday evening, though no clear winner is expected to emerge.

More than 500,000 special double-envelope ballots remain to be counted, potentially changing the seat distribution. These include votes cast by soldiers, diplomats and others voting away from their registered polling stations.

The vote – the first since the October 7, 2023, attacks and the Gaza genocide – was widely seen as a referendum on Netanyahu’s premiership. The 77-year-old appears far from defeated, despite lacking a clear majority.

Netanyahu will remain caretaker prime minister until a new government is formed. President Isaac Herzog will begin consulting party leaders about forming a new administration next week, once the official election results are released.

Herzog has urged all parties to avoid another vote that would stall the formation of a government. But coalition building is the norm in Israel, and no party has ever won an outright majority in the country’s history.

Ahead of the vote, Eisenkot ruled out forming a minority government with Arab-led parties. Netanyahu has also rejected such a prospect.

As Netanyahu’s bloc is set to be the largest, analysts predict that he will form a unity government that could include Eisenkot. However, such an outcome is far from certain.

Eisenkot said in a post on X on Wednesday that his opposition alliance was now focused on the “heavy task entrusted to us – bringing change to Israel and establishing a Zionist mobilisation government”.

“This is the will of the people who expressed no confidence in the government of October 7th and the shirking, and in the bloc of shirkers in general. A bloc that is at the low point of two decades.”

Amid record turnout among Arab voters, Netanyahu’s Likud party accused Arab parties of stealing the election.

“The elections in the State of Israel were stolen by Arab parties that support terrorism and the elimination of the Jewish state through serious criminal offences of bribery, threats, violence, forgeries, and the use of prohibited software to mobilise voters,” the party said in a statement.

“The Likud party is transferring to the police, the Shin Bet, and the Central Elections Committee hundreds of testimonies and pieces of evidence regarding election theft in many Arab polling stations,” it said.

Israel’s predominantly Arab Joint List political alliance said in a statement published late on Wednesday by Turkish news agency Anadolu that preliminary figures showed Arab voter turnout played a decisive role in keeping Netanyahu and his coalition short of a parliamentary majority, while cautioning that the final results were yet to be announced.

Voters answered incitement and intimidation at the ballot box, it said, rejecting a “government of butchers” and its policies of home demolitions, racism and war crimes.

The Joint List said its electoral support reflected demands for political unity and a force capable of defending Arab citizens’ rights without concessions.

It pledged to work to remove Netanyahu’s government and prevent its return, saying it was ready to cooperate towards an alternative government.

Joint List leader Yousef Jabareen said the alliance could back an anti-Netanyahu government from outside, but would not join it.

A federal judge on Tuesday seemed skeptical of a Trump administration request to immediately block California officials from counting about 20,000 ballots from voters whose citizenship the administration questions, but said he would not issue a ruling until Wednesday.

U.S. District Judge David O. Carter questioned how the administration had derived its list of suspect voters, worried about disenfranchising eligible voters, said the demands would represent a “monumental change” to California elections and suggested federal prosecutors bringing the case had other means of holding illegal voters accountable.

But just one day after a federal appeals court rejected the same request, Carter said at the conclusion of a 3½-hour hearing in Los Angeles that he needed more time to rule — except on one related issue.

“This court believes it would be wise — that it would be wise — that any threats to state and county elected employees cease immediately,” he said — a clear reference to federal authorities threatening elections officials with criminal penalties if they count any of the flagged ballots.

After the hearing, First Assistant U.S. Atty. Bill Essayli, the top federal prosecutor in Los Angeles who argued on behalf of the Trump administration, said he had made it “abundantly clear that American voters are being disenfranchised in real time,” and that the administration will wait to see what Carter says Wednesday but was likely to appeal the matter back up to the appellate court.

He also denied threatening state officials, despite the Justice Department having sent formal letters to election officials statewide last week warning them of criminal punishments, and Essayli reiterated that position Tuesday.

Carter’s hearing came after Monday’s decision from the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals — the reverse of what’s normal — because Justice Department attorneys had tried to go over Carter’s head after he didn’t acquiesce to a deadline they’d set for him to rule on their request for a temporary restraining order against the state last week.

However, when the three-judge appellate panel — composed of two appointees of President Trump and one of President Biden — ruled 2-1 Monday that it had no jurisdiction to hear the case given Carter hadn’t yet had the chance, the case returned to Carter’s courtroom.

And there, Carter — an appointee of President Clinton — seemed loath to rush to judgment, despite the Trump administration’s claims of urgency. He said the administration’s method for arriving at its list of potential noncitizen voters was unclear and that he would like to develop the record further, including by bringing in an expert for the court.

“What are these systems? What are the algorithms? How was this derived?” he said.

He also seemed unmoved by the Justice Department’s argument that the ballots must be segregated immediately to prevent noncitizen votes from being counted, and more focused on whether noncitizens who illegally vote can be identified and held accountable while avoiding disenfranchising legitimate voters in the process.

For those who do vote illegally, “you’ve got a remedy, for goodness sakes,” he told Essayli. “Go out and indict.”

The Justice Department sued California, Secretary of State Shirley Weber and Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk Dean Logan on Oct. 15, two days after Acting Deputy Atty. Gen. Trent McCotter gave Weber and Logan 48 hours to set aside the ballots for the 20,000 flagged voters, whom McCotter described as “likely noncitizens.”

During the hearing, Essayli argued on behalf of the Trump administration that its demands on California and L.A. County were not onerous, could be complied with easily and did not call for ballots to go uncounted. Essayli said the federal government was in court “on a very narrow request for an injunction to separate ballots of those suspected of being noncitizens” only until the state can prove their citizenship.

He argued that the “reliability and credibility” of the federal government process for flagging the 20,000 voters is unquestionable — while also telling Carter, “We’re never going to stand here and tell you that everything is 100%.” He said every vote counts, as some elections “are decided by a handful of votes,” and that the federal government is simply asking California not to break existing federal law barring noncitizens from voting.

“We’re not telling California what they have to do. We’re telling them what they can’t do, which is just count these ballots without doing more to ensure whether they’re citizens or not,” Essayli said.

Essayli — who has aggressively sparred with California officials on social media for weeks — also argued to the court that the federal government has maintained a collaborative “tone” since first asking the state to segregate the ballots, and that he was surprised at how “adversarial” state elections officials have been on the issue.

Attorneys for Weber and the state said the Trump administration’s demand on the state “distorts several legal doctrines beyond recognition” and is clearly illegal, particularly during an ongoing election. They said the administration has provided no evidence that the 20,000 voters aren’t citizens, and has used “data and methods known to be unreliable.”

Michael Cohen, a deputy attorney general for the state, said the Trump administration questions California law that allows voters to attest to their citizenship under penalty of perjury, while ignoring the fact that standard was set not by the state but by Congress.

Anne Bellows, another deputy attorney general, said California has an established framework for running elections, and the Trump administration is trying to “sweep it off the table and replace it with a new, unclear procedure in which the federal government can issue a list and require California to change the way a subset of its voters’ ballots are received, and whether or not they are tabulated,” which she said was illegal and a “recipe for disenfranchisement” of thousands of legitimate voters.

“The stakes here are enormous,” she said.

Attorneys for Logan said the Trump administration has made its demands “without any credible argument” as to how it is legal, that the “proposed remedy” it is demanding from the state is “vague and unworkable,” and that if it wants to question California’s existing processes, “the proper audience for that argument” is Congress — not the federal court.

Several attorneys for voting and civil rights groups also argued against the Trump administration during the hearing, including by arguing that its reliance on third-party data sets — including from Lexis Nexis — was not a trustworthy way of identifying whether voters are citizens.

The litigation is just one part of a much wider battle by the Trump administration to intervene in state-run elections nationwide, and particularly in California, including on the notion that state elections have insufficient guardrails to prevent noncitizens from voting. Elections experts say such fraud occurs, but is exceedingly rare.

While the 9th Circuit panel’s unsigned ruling Monday rejected the Trump administration’s appeal for lack of jurisdiction, both judges in the majority — Mark J. Bennett, a Trump appointee, and Gabriel P. Sanchez, the Biden appointee — wrote independently to make clear that they would have rejected the case on its merits too.

They said it ran afoul of federal law barring interventions in voting in the immediate lead-up to elections, and the U.S. Constitution, which reserves control of elections for the states and oversight for Congress, not the executive branch.

Judge Patrick J. Bumatay, the other Trump appointee on the panel, also wrote independently in dissent — arguing the federal government must “have the power to stop this potential attack on the integrity of our elections.”

Carter previously rejected an administration lawsuit demanding California’s unredacted voter rolls as “unprecedented and illegal” — a decision similar to those made by dozens of other federal judges in other states. Federal prosecutors recently charged 28 lawful permanent residents in California with election-related crimes, including illegally registering to vote. Some of those charged expressed confusion, said they had no recollection of registering or had never voted.

There are more than 23 million registered voters in California.

Last week, Justice Department officials sent letters to election officials in counties across California demanding they sequester any flagged ballots in their jurisdictions, and warning them that they could face criminal penalties if they don’t. State officials denounced the letters as a legally baseless intimidation tactic.

Federal judges also have slapped back executive orders in which President Trump demanded new nationwide voter ID and citizenship requirements, and blocked a Trump administration plan to empower the U.S. Postal Service to vet mail ballots for the first time.

Beyond the courts, Democrats and voting rights groups have been strategizing for months on how to prevent the Trump administration from interfering in the midterm elections, which will determine control of Congress. The Trump administration has said it is merely trying to enforce the law and ensure that noncitizens do not illegally vote and negate the ballots of U.S. citizen voters.

Polls show populist leader Aleksandar Vucic in a tight race against the anticorruption and anti-authoritarian movement.

Serbians are voting in parliamentary elections amid a mass student protest ⁠movement that seeks to oust longtime populist leader Aleksandar Vucic, who has held power as prime minister and then president for more than a decade.

The snap elections, called by Vucic in September, follow almost two years of student-led demonstrations against perceived corruption ⁠and creeping authoritarianism, triggered by the deaths of 16 people when a train station canopy collapsed in the city of Novi Sad in 2024.

The students have since gained widespread support.

A loss for Vucic ⁠would mark a profound political shift in the Balkan country of some 6 million people, reminiscent of the defeat of Hungary’s Viktor Orban in April.

But Vucic, who resigned as president in September to run again for prime minister, is a strong incumbent. Many voters thank him for pulling Serbia out of economic obscurity and ‌orchestrating a period of sustained modernisation.

“The Serbian election ⁠is shaping up to be a watershed moment for the country as the Student List mounts the biggest challenge against Vucic yet,” Mario Bikarski, senior Europe analyst at risk consultancy Verisk Maplecroft, told the Reuters news agency.

During the campaign, Vucic has promised higher pensions and public sector salaries, investment in state healthcare, and subsidies for young couples. He has balanced closer ties with China, a major investor, and Russia, Serbia’s traditional ally and principal supplier of natural gas, while leaving the door open to joining the European Union.

But relations with the EU have frayed under his leadership, with the bloc growing increasingly frustrated over a lack of reforms addressing the judiciary, the rule of law and corruption.

The Student List movement’s agenda focuses on rooting out corruption and improving schooling, while saying little about their international ambitions.

Their roster of 250 largely unfamiliar candidates, including university professors, actors and farmers, is led by cardiologist Ilija Srdanovic.

Opinion polls are predicting a tight race.

An Ipsos poll published on Thursday gives Vucic’s Serbian Progressive Party 47 percent ⁠of the vote to the students’ 40 percent, though other polls have put the students ahead.

Rights groups and activists say repression has worsened since the deadly train station canopy collapse, which was widely blamed on government corruption and sparked the student demonstrations.

About 150,000 supporters of the student movement rallied in central Belgrade on Thursday.

Vucic and his party have repeatedly denied accusations of repression, corruption and spying on their opponents.

The former president claims the students are funded by foreign agents in Croatia and Montenegro, a charge the students deny.