Justice Department drops lawsuit over California ballots

The U.S. Department of Justice filed a motion on Friday to dismiss its own lawsuit against California. The suit sought to halt the counting of approximately 20,000 ballots that federal officials claimed belonged to noncitizens. The move follows recent midterm election results that favored Democratic candidates.

State election officials reported that California had processed roughly 9 million ballots as of early Friday. Nearly 5 million ballots remained to be counted. The Justice Department argued that the state would have already mixed the disputed ballots with valid ones by the time of a scheduled hearing. The motion stated that the relief the government needed was no longer available.

U.S. District Judge David O. Carter had previously denied the federal government's request to stop the count. Carter, a Clinton appointee, argued that separating ballots at that late stage risked disenfranchising citizens. He warned the process would create chaos for the midterm elections. A special master was set to evaluate the accuracy of the federal list of suspected noncitizens at a hearing later this week.

Bill Essayli, the top federal prosecutor in Los Angeles, filed the suit in mid-October. He stated the goal was to safeguard the integrity of the election. Essayli argued that stopping illegal voting before the vote count was finished was essential. He noted that once a ballot is processed, it is completely anonymized, making it impossible to identify specific noncitizen voters later.

The Department of Justice remains involved in other legal battles regarding voter eligibility. It is also appealing a ruling in Alaska that dismissed a separate suit meant to block a Democratic Senate victory. The federal agency did not respond to requests for comment on Friday evening. The local U.S. Attorney’s Office directed inquiries to Washington, D.C.

California prosecutors have arrested more than 30 noncitizens accused of illegally registering to vote. Some of those arrested are also accused of voting in prior elections. Elections clerks across the state received subpoenas in the week before the election. They were ordered to testify before grand juries scheduled to convene in November.