DOJ dropping suit over alleged noncitizen ballots
The Justice Department moved to dismiss its own lawsuit that sought to stop California from counting roughly 20,000 ballots it alleged went to noncitizens.
The US Justice Department has decided to drop its lawsuit against California regarding the alleged use of noncitizen ballots. This decision comes after the Republicans suffered significant losses in the midterm elections and a week before a scheduled hearing where a special master was to evaluate the accuracy of the list of suspected noncitizens.
California officials have previously stated that the list is outdated and includes legitimate voters, a view echoed by the federal judge overseeing the case. The lawsuit was filed in mid-October as all 23 million registered voters in the state received their ballots, with hundreds of thousands already processed. Once a ballot is processed, it is fully anonymized, making it impossible to separate ballots solely belonging to noncitizens.
The motion to dismiss the lawsuit stated that by the time of the hearing, the state would have already mixed the challenged ballots with lawful ones, rendering the lawsuit irrelevant. The United States Attorney's Office for the Central District of California referred all questions to the Department of Justice, which did not respond to a request for comment.
California prosecutors have arrested over 30 noncitizens accused of illegally registering to vote, some of whom may have also voted in previous elections. Elections clerks were sent subpoenas to testify before grand juries in November, although it is unclear who is being criminally charged.
Written by urgent.news from CBS News's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
