Justice Department drops bid to hold 20,000 California ballots
The federal government asked a federal court to dismiss its lawsuit days after Republican midterm losses and a week before a key hearing on voter eligibility.
By Jonathan Reed ·
The U.S. Department of Justice requested on Friday to dismiss its lawsuit seeking to stop California from counting approximately 20,000 ballots it claimed belonged to noncitizens. The filing arrives days after Republicans suffered losses in the midterm elections and about one week before a scheduled hearing where a special master was set to review the accuracy of the disputed voter list.
The case centered on the administration's effort to assert federal control over state elections. President Donald Trump had previously stated that state-run elections contain widespread noncitizen voting, though available data indicates such occurrences are rare. The Justice Department remains involved in other litigation with immigrant and voting rights groups regarding the use of its suspected noncitizen list.
In a statement released Friday evening, the department said it would continue to prosecute suspected election law violations through other cases. It also filed a motion supporting a separate lawsuit from May that argues California fails to remove ineligible voters from its rolls. Bill Essayli, the top Los Angeles prosecutor, said the intervention is part of an effort to use every civil and criminal remedy to ensure only eligible citizens vote.
State election officials reported that California processed roughly 9 million ballots as of early Friday, with nearly 5 million remaining to be counted. The motion to dismiss argued that by the time of the upcoming hearing, the state would have mixed the challenged ballots with lawful ones, making them impossible to separate. The lawsuit was filed in mid-October, after ballots were mailed to all 23 million registered voters in the state.
Once a ballot is processed, it becomes completely anonymized, the motion noted. The document stated that the relief the United States sought is no longer available, making voluntary dismissal necessary. Justice Department spokesperson Kiersten Pels said California refused to cooperate with federal requests to set aside ballots, protecting what she called illegal voters. She added that thousands of likely noncitizens remain on voter rolls and voted in the 2026 elections.
California prosecutors have arrested more than 30 noncitizens in recent weeks for allegedly registering to vote illegally. Some of those arrested also faced accusations of voting in previous elections. U.S. District Judge David O. Carter, appointed by former President Bill Clinton, allowed California to proceed with the elections as planned in late October. He appointed the special master shortly after ruling that separating ballots at such a late stage would risk disenfranchising citizens and cause havoc for the midterm elections.
The special master was also tasked with determining whether California election officials had a mechanism to separate the disputed ballots. Judge Carter had previously described the federal government's list as out of date and including legitimate voters, a view echoed by California officials.
