The United States Justice Department has officially requested that a federal court dismiss its lawsuit aimed at blocking the counting of approximately 20,000 ballots in California. The administration had previously alleged that these ballots were sent to noncitizens, but the department now contends that the specific relief it originally sought is no longer possible to achieve.
This legal motion, filed on Friday, comes in the aftermath of the midterm elections and ahead of a hearing that had been scheduled for the following week. The lawsuit, which was initiated in mid-October, had requested the separation of mail-in ballots cast by individuals whose citizenship status was being questioned by the government. At the time the lawsuit was filed, state officials had already processed hundreds of thousands of votes out of a total of 23 million ballots distributed to registered voters.
California election officials have consistently disputed the accuracy of the list provided by the federal government, describing it as outdated and inclusive of many eligible voters. The federal judge overseeing the proceedings had previously expressed skepticism regarding the evidence presented by the government and had rejected an earlier request to mandate the segregation of the disputed ballots.
In its latest filing, the Justice Department explained that by the time any hearing could be held, the state would have already integrated the contested ballots with those deemed lawful. Once ballots are processed in the state's system, they are anonymised, which renders it impossible to identify or isolate individual votes for further scrutiny. Consequently, the department stated that a voluntary dismissal was necessary because the required relief was no longer available.
The legal battle had reached the Supreme Court earlier in the week, where the government sought an emergency order to require California to set aside the mail-in ballots from the 20,000 individuals in question. The Supreme Court rejected that request in a one-line, unsigned order issued on Monday, the day before Election Day.
Bill Essayli, a federal prosecutor in Los Angeles, had previously remarked that the lawsuit faced potential irrelevance following the conclusion of the election. Before the voting ended, Essayli stated outside the courtroom that the government’s primary objective was to prevent what it characterized as illegal voting rather than investigating such incidents after the fact. He emphasised that the goal was to stop the process before the ballots were cast and counted.
As of Friday, California election officials reported that they had successfully processed approximately nine million ballots, with nearly five million still awaiting count. This development marks the end of this specific challenge in California, even as other legal disputes continue in various parts of the country. In a separate instance, a federal judge recently dismissed a Justice Department lawsuit that sought to influence the outcome of an Alaska Senate race. While the administration is currently pursuing an appeal regarding the Alaska decision, it has yet to submit a full brief to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.
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