US Justice Department drops lawsuit over 20,000 California mail-in ballots

Case dropped after the midterms

The US Justice Department has withdrawn its lawsuit against California over 20,000 mail-in ballots that it said had been sent in by noncitizens. A notice of voluntary dismissal was filed late on Friday, 6 November, in Los Angeles, addressed to Judge David O. Carter of the US District Court for the Central District of California. The filing came after a sweeping repudiation of the Trump administration in the midterm elections held on Tuesday, 3 November. Several federal courts had also ruled against the administration's assertion that noncitizens were voting illegally on a large scale. The Supreme Court had already rejected the request on the eve of the election. The formal end of the bid came only after that series of defeats.

What the filing sought

The department wanted the ballots set aside and stored separately, so that they would not go into any count until the voters' identities were resolved. The ballots had been mailed in by people the agency believed were probably not eligible to vote. According to the department itself, it suspected California of admitting about 20,000 people who were not citizens to the midterm elections. Federal officials said they had cross-checked several databases to produce a list of thousands of likely noncitizens that they alleged were on California's voter rolls. State and local officials replied that the list was outdated and riddled with errors. They added that it also included citizens who would lose their votes if their ballots were not counted.

Court orders and intimidation claims

Earlier, the administration had also tried to intimidate election officials with summonses, relying on the same unproven claim that thousands of registered voters were not citizens. A few days before the election, federal judge Trina Thompson issued a preliminary injunction that bars the department from threatening election officials with prosecution while they process ballots. The order also forbids officials from demanding that certain registered voters be struck from the rolls, from refusing them ballots, or from not counting their votes. Thompson described the intimidation of election workers and the threats of prosecution as unlawful and arbitrary. Unions and civil rights groups had brought the lawsuit against the government over these actions.

Other midterm races

Xavier Becerra, a Democrat, won the California governorship by a large margin over Republican Steve Hilton, and the same vote decided California's House seats. In South Carolina, Democrat Nancy Lacore won the first congressional district, defeating Republican Jenny Costa Honeycutt, a lawyer and county councillor in Charleston County. The Associated Press called the race for Lacore at 18:51 local time. Lacore succeeds Republican Nancy Mace, who gave up the seat after an unsuccessful run for governor.