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

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.

Safiyah Riddle, The Associated Press

by The Canadian Press

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

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