Justice Department Drops Bid To Halt California Ballot Counting
Federal prosecutors seek dismissal days after midterm results, citing the irreversible mixing of disputed and lawful votes.
By Marco Whitaker ·
The U.S. Department of Justice filed a motion on Friday to dismiss its lawsuit against California. The case sought to prevent the state from counting approximately 20,000 ballots. Federal officials alleged these ballots belonged to noncitizens who had not yet verified their immigration status.
The dismissal request arrived days after Republicans suffered losses in the midterm elections. It also came about one week before a scheduled hearing. A special master was set to review the accuracy of the list identifying the alleged noncitizens. The motion states that California has already processed roughly 9 million ballots as of early Friday. Nearly 5 million ballots remain uncounted.
Once a ballot is processed, it is anonymized. The Justice Department argued that by the time of the hearing, the state would have irreparably commingled the challenged ballots with lawful ones. The motion concluded that the specific relief the federal government sought is no longer available, making voluntary dismissal necessary.
U.S. District Judge David O. Carter appointed the special master in late October. Carter, appointed by former President Bill Clinton, previously allowed California to proceed with elections as planned. He warned that separating ballots at such a late stage would risk disenfranchising citizens and would wreak havoc on the midterm elections. The special master was also tasked with determining if California officials had a mechanism to separate the ballots.
California officials maintained that the federal list was outdated and included legitimate voters. A federal judge echoed this sentiment in an order denying the government’s earlier request. The lawsuit was filed in mid-October, after ballots were sent to all 23 million registered voters in the state. By that time, hundreds of thousands of ballots had already been processed.
The Justice Department remains involved in other litigation regarding voting rights. It filed a motion in May to support a separate lawsuit alleging California fails to remove ineligible voters from its rolls. Top Los Angeles prosecutor Bill Essayli said the intervention is part of an effort to pursue every available civil and criminal remedy to ensure only eligible American citizens vote. The department stated it will continue to prosecute suspected violations through other legal cases.
Justice Department spokesperson Kiersten Pels said California chose to protect illegal voters and refused to cooperate with the federal request. She stated that thousands of likely noncitizens remain on the state’s voter rolls and voted in the 2026 elections. California prosecutors have arrested more than 30 noncitizens in recent weeks. These individuals are accused of illegally registering to vote, and some are also accused of voting in previous elections.
