California Governor Gavin Newsom on Saturday, October 31, 2026, warned the state's federal judges to be ready for what he described as a possible attempt by President Donald Trump's administration to seize ballots during the upcoming midterm elections, Reuters reported. In a letter sent to federal judges, Newsom said he had grave concerns that federal agents could seek search warrants to take ballots and ballot materials before California certifies its election results.
Source: Reuters, Oct. 31, 2026
This is a follow-up to the earlier stage of the same dispute: on Friday, October 30, a U.S. appeals court rejected the administration's bid to force California to immediately set aside the ballots of about 20,000 voters the Justice Department calls likely noncitizens. Newsom's letter is the new development — a warning about the next step he fears the administration could take after losing that bid, not a report that any seizure has happened.
What Newsom actually wrote to the judges
"Given the United States Department of Justice's persistence in advancing this baseless theory of criminal liability, I have grave concerns federal agents will seek search warrants to seize ballots and ballot materials before the election results are certified," Newsom wrote, according to Reuters. He argued that the only reason to use such search warrants would be to interfere in the state's lawful counting of ballots and certifying of the results, and said there is no legitimate law enforcement reason to seize ballots, ballot materials and the equipment needed to process and tabulate ballots.
The letter went to the chief judges of California's four federal district courts, according to the SF Standard, and the governor's office published the letter on its website. Newsom asked the judges to closely scrutinise any request for ballots, election records or vote-counting equipment. A ballot-seizure warrant is a court order that would let federal agents physically take ballots, election records or equipment as evidence — and a judge has to approve it first, which is exactly the step at which Newsom is asking judges to push back.
Source: ThisNewsroom / SF Standard summary, Oct. 31, 2026
Newsom himself wrote that he is unaware that there are any such matters at this time. No outlet reports that the Justice Department has applied for a ballot-seizure warrant in California, and no court has issued one. The letter is a warning about a move the governor fears could come — readers should not read it as news that ballots have been seized.
The fight underneath: the 20,000-voter list
The letter came as California's legal fight with the administration widened. The Justice Department has demanded records from California as part of what it describes as a criminal investigation into noncitizen voting. The administration has alleged that more than 20,000 noncitizens are registered to vote in California, though the state and many experts have questioned the validity of the list, and the Justice Department has not said how many of the people on its list have actually submitted ballots, Reuters reported.
California has said the Justice Department's assertions relied on what it called suspect data and that complying with its demands would risk disenfranchising eligible voters. In a filing on Saturday, UCLA data scientists said the federal list has many errors, citing apparent citizens on the list and thousands of names not found in state records, according to the reporting summarised by ThisNewsroom. The U.S. Constitution assigns the administration of elections to the states, which is the legal ground California is standing on.
Two court setbacks for the Justice Department this week
On Friday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit blocked the effort to force California to immediately set aside the roughly 20,000 voters' ballots — a ruling Reuters said could set up a showdown at the U.S. Supreme Court — and the court set a schedule for more fact-finding after the polls close. Separately, a federal judge ordered the Justice Department to stop threatening to prosecute state and local election officials in California who refuse to comply with the administration's election-related demands. "These threats must stop," the judge wrote, according to NPR reporting cited in the coverage.
Newsom's letter also enclosed a September guide from the UC Berkeley Edley Center on Law and Democracy titled "Questions for Assessing A Search Warrant for Election Materials," written for magistrate and district judges. California Attorney General Rob Bonta has also issued a legal advisory guiding judges and election officials on handling warrants for election materials — a sign that how a warrant request would be handled is now a live legal question in the state, not a theoretical one.
The subpoenas already sitting over Los Angeles County
The governor pointed to Justice Department threats of prosecution against election officials and to federal grand jury subpoenas already sent to Los Angeles County election workers. The subpoenas carry an October 24 date, went to three employees of the LA County Registrar-Recorder, and require them to appear on November 4 — the day after the election — according to the Associated Press reporting via CapRadio cited in the coverage. They seek records on federal letters alleging noncitizens on the voter rolls and ask how the county prevents noncitizen voting. Orange County also reportedly received a subpoena seeking unredacted records on about 60 people.
Why this matters for California voters — including Punjabi families
The disputed 20,000 names are a small fraction of California's roughly 23 million voters, and nothing in the reporting says any voter's ballot is at risk today. Mail ballots are already in the system, the count will run for weeks, and certification is not due until December 11 — that long window between Election Day on Tuesday, November 3, and the final certified result is exactly what Newsom says he is trying to protect. For Punjabi and other immigrant families in the Central Valley, Sacramento, San Jose and Los Angeles — many of them naturalised citizens voting in a U.S. election — the dispute cuts close to home, because it is being fought over lists that claim to identify noncitizens on the rolls, lists the state says contain citizens and names that do not match its records at all. Every allegation in this dispute remains contested and unproven in the form the administration has presented it, and the courts, so far, have not accepted the demand to set ballots aside.
What happens next
Three dates now matter. Election Day is Tuesday, November 3. The LA County employees are due before the grand jury on November 4. Fact-finding in the 20,000-ballot case continues once the polls close, a Supreme Court appeal is possible, and California must certify by December 11. The reporting so far shows no response from the Justice Department or the White House to Newsom's letter. Until a warrant is actually applied for — if one ever is — the governor's letter remains what he wrote it as: a warning, delivered in public, to the judges who would have to sign it.