Vote-by-mail ballots delivered to a precinct. Photo: Joe Hall, CC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons.
The US Department of Justice has dropped its lawsuit seeking to stop California from counting roughly 20,000 mail-in ballots it alleged were cast by noncitizens, conceding that the relief it wanted is no longer possible.
The department filed a notice of voluntary dismissal in federal court in Los Angeles on Friday, days after Republicans suffered significant losses in the midterm elections and four days after the Supreme Court declined to intervene in the case.
What the Lawsuit Sought
The Justice Department sued California on October 15, demanding that the state set aside about 20,000 ballots from voters federal officials alleged were likely non-US citizens until their immigration status could be verified. The suit was filed after ballots had already been sent to all of the state's 23 million registered voters, and after hundreds of thousands of ballots had already been processed.
The case was at the forefront of the Trump administration's effort to assert control over state-run elections across the country. The department has sued at least 30 states that refused to turn over voter data, losing almost all of those cases, according to the Los Angeles Times.
Why the Case Was Dropped
In the two-page dismissal filing, Assistant US Attorney Julie Hamill wrote that "the relief the United States sought and needed is no longer available — rendering voluntary dismissal necessary."
The filing explained that by the time of a previously scheduled court hearing on November 13, California would already have "commingled the challenged ballots with lawful ones," making it impossible to separate them. 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.
The courts had already turned the government away at every level. US District Judge David O. Carter had ruled that the request was likely unconstitutional, noting that the Constitution gives states and Congress power over elections, not the executive branch, and that it likely ran afoul of federal law barring sweeping vetting of voter rolls in the immediate run-up to an election. A three-judge panel of the US 9th Circuit Court of Appeals also rejected the request, and on Monday — the day before the election — the Supreme Court denied the administration's emergency appeal in a one-line, unsigned order, with no noted dissents.
Judge Carter had also characterized the government's request as part of "a broad, ongoing pattern of attempted election interference." He had ordered an expedited hearing for November 13, where a special master was to evaluate the accuracy of the government's list of alleged noncitizens. State officials said the list was out of date and included legitimate voters, according to the Associated Press.
What Officials Said
Bill Essayli, the top federal prosecutor in Los Angeles, had previously said the lawsuit would be irrelevant after election day because there would be no way to sequester ballots allegedly belonging to noncitizens.
Justice Department spokesperson Kiersten Pels doubled down on the earlier accusations on Friday, saying that "California chose to protect illegal voters and thus refused to cooperate" with the federal request to set aside ballots.
The department remains involved in litigation with multiple immigrant and voting rights groups seeking to limit its use of the list of suspected noncitizens. It has also filed a motion supporting a separate lawsuit filed in May that alleges California violates national voting laws by failing to remove ineligible voters from its rolls quickly enough.
For now, though, the headline case is over: California will keep counting every ballot it processed, and the 20,000 challenged votes will remain mixed in with the rest.
Sources: Reuters, Associated Press, Los Angeles Times.