The U.S. Justice Department moved Friday to voluntarily dismiss its lawsuit challenging the counting of 20,000 ballots in California, arguing that the relief it sought was now impossible given that Tuesday’s midterm elections were over.
The Justice Department had sought a court order requiring state and Los Angeles County election officials to void ballots, which it said could have come from non-citizen voters. U.S. District Judge David O. Carter and a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals had both rejected that request, and the U.S. Supreme Court rejected a Trump administration appeal of those lower court rulings — without any notable dissent.
Carter had ruled that the government’s request was likely unconstitutional, given that the Constitution gives power over elections to the states and Congress, not the executive branch, and likely ran afoul of federal law prohibiting extensive scrutiny of voter rolls in the period immediately preceding an election.
However, he had set a timetable for further investigating the matter, including appointing a special master to review the data the federal government relied on to claim that the 20,000 voters were potentially non-citizens.
In a filing before Carter Friday, Assistant U.S. Attorney. Julie Hamill of Los Angeles wrote that this legal process was no longer necessary because it would not provide the relief the federal government was seeking by filing a lawsuit.
“In light of the Supreme Court’s refusal, the United States is evaluating how best to ensure that American votes are protected, including by preventing vote dilution by non-citizens. Additionally, by the time of this Court’s November 13 hearing on this case, California will already have commingled challenged ballots with legal ballots,” Hamill wrote. “There is then no way to obtain severance of the challenged ballots. As a result, the relief sought and necessary by the United States is no longer available, making voluntary termination necessary.”
Hamill wrote that the Trump administration had sought to “protect American voters and prevent irreparable harm to state and local election officials, including votes cast illegally during the final vote count,” but had “exhausted its remedies for timely relief” by going to — and being denied by — the Supreme Court.
First Assistant U.S. Attorney. Bill Essayli’s Los Angeles office — where Hamill works — referred questions about the case to the Justice Department.
Kiersten Pels, a Justice Department spokesperson, said the litigation in question is “moot” but that the Trump administration is “not backing down” in its targeting of presumed non-citizen voters, including a separate case in which it still requires California to “conduct proper roll maintenance, including removing non-citizens from the state’s voter rolls — which will be crucial to ensuring fair elections in the future.”
Secretary of State Shirley Weber, a defendant in the case, did not immediately respond to a request for comment Friday.
Los Angeles County Registrar/Clerk Dean Logan, another defendant, said he was “pleased that the administration accepted the clarity of the court’s findings” against him and ended his trial.
“At every stage of this election, and in response to the Department of Justice, we have made clear that state and federal laws establish well-defined standards for verifying and challenging voter eligibility,” Logan said. “Our commitment and focus remains on the fair, secure, accurate and lawful processes we are engaged in to conduct and certify the election.”
California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta, in a statement, said that after losing in every court he tried, including the Supreme Court, “the Trump administration has abandoned its latest illegal attempt to interfere with California’s elections and disenfranchise eligible voters.”
Bonta added: “Rest assured: California has and will always defend your fundamental right to vote. »
Tricia Webber, president of the California Assn. clerks and election officials, said state election officials “are very pleased” with the voluntary dismissal of the case — which she said “affirms that our elections are administered with the utmost integrity and care.”
“At the same time, we are under no illusions. We recognize that this problem is unlikely to go away permanently, and we remain fully prepared to continue to defend California’s election administration against future challenges,” she said. “We will always be prepared to protect the right of every eligible voter to participate in a fair and secure electoral process. »
The administration’s filing — three days after President Trump’s party was defeated in the midterms — marks the sudden and unremarkable conclusion to an unprecedented legal battle in the days leading up to the election, when the federal government sought court permission to force state and local election officials to throw out votes in an ongoing election.
Carter had rejected the administration’s request for immediate intervention in a scathing Oct. 28 ruling, calling his allegations about ineligible voters “not credible” and warning that the proposed action could disenfranchise eligible voters and sow chaos in the ongoing midterm elections.
“This request violates long-standing constitutional principles requiring states to control their elections,” Carter wrote. “If (the Trump administration’s) last-minute relief request were granted, either party could create chaos for its own political purposes and disrupt the electoral process.”
While Justice Department officials called the relief they requested from the court “targeted and modest,” Carter came to a very different conclusion — writing that the administration’s requests would “wreak havoc” on an ongoing election and “create a chilling effect on election workers and voters, and discard the votes of American citizens.”
The reliability of the government list has become a central issue in the dispute. Logan’s office said its review of about 200 reported voters found that a substantial portion appeared to be born in the United States, a finding disputed by Homeland Security officials.
Election officials elsewhere in California also reported problems with the lists, including the names of people who did not appear to live in their county or be registered voters. Justice Department officials sent letters to election officials across the state, demanding that they sequester flagged ballots and warning them of possible criminal penalties if they did not comply.
The three-judge 9th Circuit panel that heard the federal government’s appeal of Carter’s decision — made up of two appointees of President Trump and one of President Biden — reached some of the same conclusions as Carter in a 2-1 decision. One of Trump’s nominees disagreed, writing that he would have governed for the administration.
Carter ordered an expedited hearing on the state and county’s motions to dismiss the case and the government’s motion for a preliminary injunction. He ordered all parties by November 6 to submit lists of witnesses, including experts, regarding the reliability of the voters’ list and the methodology behind it. He ordered both parties to appear at the November 13 hearing, with proposed witnesses ready to appear.
Ending the litigation now will prevent this process of detailing the origins of the administration’s list — which is still used by federal prosecutors in California to target individual voters for criminal prosecutions.
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