Justice Department: California Ballot Case Moot

The U.S. Department of Justice filed a motion on Friday to dismiss its lawsuit against California. The case sought to halt the state from counting approximately 20,000 ballots that federal officials alleged were cast by noncitizens. The government requested a voluntary dismissal to avoid a hearing scheduled for the following week.

Federal prosecutors argued that the state has already processed roughly 9 million ballots, with nearly 5 million still awaiting a count. According to the motion, California will have irreparably commingled the challenged ballots with lawful ones by the time of the scheduled hearing. The document stated that the relief the United States sought is no longer available.

The lawsuit was filed in mid-October, after ballots had been mailed to all 23 million registered voters in the state. At that time, hundreds of thousands of ballots had already been processed. Once a ballot is processed, it is completely anonymized, making it impossible to separate specific votes from the rest of the pile.

Bill Essayli, the top federal prosecutor in Los Angeles, previously argued that the lawsuit would become irrelevant after Election Day. He stated that the goal was to safeguard the integrity of the election. In a comment made outside court the week before the election, Essayli said, "We want to stop the illegal voting. We don't want to chase it later."

U.S. District Judge David O. Carter appointed a special master in late October to evaluate the accuracy of the noncitizen list. Carter, appointed by former President Bill Clinton, denied the federal government's earlier request in an order that warned separating ballots at that late stage would wreak havoc on the midterms. The special master was also tasked with determining if California had a mechanism to separate the ballots.

California officials have maintained that the federal list is outdated and includes legitimate voters. The state has also moved aggressively on the enforcement front. Prosecutors have arrested over 30 noncitizens accused of illegally registering to vote. Some of those arrested are also accused of voting in previous elections. Subpoenas were sent to elections clerks across the state to testify before grand juries convening in November.

The Department of Justice did not respond to an emailed request for comment on Friday evening. The office referred all questions to headquarters in Washington, D.C. The dismissal request arrives days after Republican losses in the midterm elections and precedes a hearing where the special master was slated to review the disputed list.