US Justice Department drops bid to force California to set aside disputed ballots

LOS ANGELES (AP) — The U.S. Department of Justice on Friday requested to dismiss its own lawsuit that sought to stop California from counting roughly 20,000 ballots it alleged went to noncitizens until their immigration statuses could be verified.

The move comes days after Republicans' significant losses in the midterm elections and about a week before a scheduled hearing where a special master was slated to evaluate the accuracy of the list of alleged noncitizens. California officials have previously said the list is out of date and includes legitimate voters — a sentiment that the federal judge presiding over the case echoed in his blistering order denying the federal government's request.

The case was at the forefront of President Donald Trump's administration's effort to assert control over state-run elections across the country, which Trump has said are rife with noncitizen votin g without providing evidence. Available data indicates occurrences are exceedingly rare.

The Justice Department remains enmeshed in litigation with multiple immigrant and voting rights groups seeking to limit its use of the list of what it says are suspected noncitizens. It said in a statement Friday evening that it would continue to prosecute and litigate suspected violations of election law through other legal cases.

The department also filed a motion in support of a separate lawsuit filed in May that alleges that California violates national voting laws by failing to sufficiently remove ineligible voters from its rolls. The intervention is part of a broader effort to continue to “pursue every available civil and criminal remedy to ensure that only eligible American citizens vote in American elections,” top Los Angeles prosecutor Bill Essayli said.

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 motion to dismiss the lawsuit said that, by the time of the upcoming hearing, the state will have already irreparably "commingled the challenged ballots with lawful ones."

“The relief the United States sought and needed is no longer available—rendering voluntary dismissal necessary,” the motion said.

The lawsuit was filed in mid-October, when ballots had been sent to all of the state's 23 million registered voters, and after hundreds of thousands of ballots were already processed. Once a ballot is processed, it is completely anonymized.

Justice Department spokesperson Kiersten Pels on Friday doubled down on earlier accusations that “California chose to protect illegal voters and thus refused to cooperate” with the federal request to set aside ballots, and said that “thousands of likely noncitizens remain on California’s voter rolls and voted in the 2026 elections.”

California prosecutors in recent weeks have arrested over 30 noncitizens who are accused of illegally registering to vote. Some who were arrested were also accused of voting in previous elections.

U.S. District Judge David O. Carter appointed the special master in late October, shortly after allowing California to proceed with elections as planned. Carter, who was appointed by former President Bill Clinton, argued in his order that separating ballots at such a late stage would risk disenfranchising citizens and warned it would “wreak havoc” on the midterm elections.

The special master would have also considered whether or not California election officials did in fact have a mechanism for separating the ballots.

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