The U.S. Department of Justice on Friday voluntarily dismissed its lawsuit seeking to force California election officials to set aside about 20,000 mail ballots from people on a Homeland Security list of purported noncitizens.
Attorney General Rob Bonta said the government dropped the case rather than face a Nov. 13 evidentiary hearing before U.S. District Judge David Carter on the reliability of that list. Bonta counted four consecutive losses in one week, including a U.S. Supreme Court denial of emergency relief on Nov. 2.
Courthouse News Service reported that DOJ said it was “evaluating how to best ensure that American votes are protected” after the Supreme Court denial. Judge Carter had earlier refused a temporary restraining order, writing that never before had the federal government, on the eve of an election, sought to coerce a state to abandon its own election procedures.
The dismissal ends the midterm-season effort to segregate the disputed ballots. Counties continue counting remaining mail and provisional ballots under California’s usual rules.