The U.S. Department of Justice on Friday moved to dismiss its own lawsuit that sought to stop California from counting roughly 20,000 ballots the government alleged were sent to noncitizens.
The voluntary dismissal comes days after Republicans’ heavy midterm losses and about a week before a scheduled hearing where a special master was set to evaluate the accuracy of the federal list. California officials have said the list is out of date and includes legitimate voters — a view U.S. District Judge David O. Carter echoed when he earlier refused the government’s request to sequester the ballots.
In its motion, the Justice Department argued that by the time of the upcoming hearing the state would already have “commingled the challenged ballots with lawful ones,” making the relief it sought unavailable. “The relief the United States sought and needed is no longer available—rendering voluntary dismissal necessary,” the filing said.
California had processed roughly 9 million ballots as of early Friday, with nearly 5 million still left to be counted, according to state election officials. Once a ballot is processed in California, it is anonymized, so there is no practical way to pull individual ballots back out later.
The case was a centerpiece of the Trump administration’s effort to assert a larger federal role in state-run elections. The administration has also been locked in related litigation with immigrant and voting-rights groups over its use of lists of suspected noncitizens. A separate Justice Department suit filed in Alaska before the election, aimed at blocking certification involving the Democratic Senate candidate there, was dismissed by a federal judge; the administration is appealing.
Separately, California prosecutors in recent weeks have arrested more than 30 noncitizens accused of illegally registering to vote, with some also accused of voting in prior elections. The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Central District of California referred questions about Friday’s dismissal to the Justice Department in Washington, which did not immediately respond to requests for comment.