Justice Department moves to dismiss California noncitizen ballots lawsuit
The US Justice Department has moved to dismiss its lawsuit against California for allegedly counting about 20,000 ballots from noncitizens.
This move came days after Republicans suffered significant losses in the midterm elections and about a week before a hearing was set where a special master was slated to evaluate the accuracy of the disputed voter list.
Judge David O. Carter pointed out that trying to separate these ballots would mess with the election process, especially since California officials said the list includes legitimate voters.
Lawsuit part of Trump administration challenges
This lawsuit was part of a bigger push by the Trump administration to challenge state-run elections based on unproven claims of illegal voting.
The case hit a wall because millions of votes had already been counted, making it impossible to pull out specific ballots, so as prosecutor Bill Essayli put it, the lawsuit would be irrelevant after Election Day.
Meanwhile, California says it's already taken steps to prevent noncitizen voting and has arrested over 30 noncitizens who are accused of illegally registering to vote in recent weeks, some of whom were accused of voting in previous elections.