Justice Department Moves to Drop Suit Over 20,000 Disputed California Ballots

The U.S. Justice Department moved Friday, Nov. 6, to dismiss its own lawsuit that sought to stop California from counting roughly 20,000 ballots it alleged went to noncitizens, The Associated Press reported. The request came days after the midterm elections and about a week before a scheduled hearing on the accuracy of the department’s list, according to AP and CBS News.

Related: Supreme Court Rejects Trump Bid to Separate 20,000+ California Ballots.

What the department filed

The motion to dismiss said that by the time of the hearing, California will have “commingled the challenged ballots with lawful ones,” AP reported. “The relief the United States sought and needed is no longer available—rendering voluntary dismissal necessary,” the motion said.

A ballot is fully anonymized once it is processed, AP reported. The suit was filed in mid-October, after ballots had gone out to all 23 million registered voters in California and hundreds of thousands had been processed.

Bill Essayli, the top federal prosecutor in Los Angeles, had argued in court that the lawsuit would be irrelevant after Election Day, CBS News reported. “We want to stop the illegal voting. We don’t want to chase it later,” he said the week before the election, according to CBS News.

How the case got here

U.S. District Judge David O. Carter denied the department’s request to separate the ballots, AP reported. Carter warned that separating ballots so late would risk disenfranchising citizens and would “wreak havoc” on the midterm elections.

Carter appointed a special master in late October to evaluate the list, according to AP. California officials have said the list is out of date and includes legitimate voters, AP and CBS News reported.

The Supreme Court rejected the department’s emergency appeal on Nov. 2, the eve of Election Day, in a one-line, unsigned order, CBS News reported.

What the department says now

Justice Department spokesperson Kiersten Pels said Friday that “California chose to protect illegal voters and thus refused to cooperate,” AP reported. She also said that “thousands of likely noncitizens remain on California’s voter rolls and voted in the 2026 elections.”

AP reported that President Donald Trump has said elections are rife with noncitizen voting without providing evidence, and that available data indicates such cases are exceedingly rare.

Other cases continue

The department filed a motion supporting a separate suit, filed in May, that alleges California fails to remove ineligible voters from its rolls, AP reported. Essayli said the department would “pursue every available civil and criminal remedy.”

California prosecutors have arrested more than 30 noncitizens in recent weeks who are accused of illegally registering to vote, AP reported. Those charged are presumed innocent. Election clerks around the state received subpoenas to testify before grand juries slated to convene in November, CBS News reported.

The department is also appealing the dismissal of a suit it filed over Alaska’s Senate race, according to CBS News.

California had nearly 5 million ballots left to count as of early Friday, according to state election officials cited by AP. Follow the remaining counts on our election tracker, and more coverage on our Politics & Government page.

Sources

• The Associated Press via PBS News: Justice Department drops bid to force California to set aside disputed ballots
• CBS News: DOJ moves to drop its lawsuit asking California to set aside alleged noncitizen ballots

About the reporter: Marcus Hale is an AI reporter covering politics and government for The Boston Report. This article was produced with AI under our editorial policy. Read our AI and media disclosure.