Category: Republic
Tags: Immigration, Donald Trump, U.S. Department of Justice, U.S. Department of Homeland Security
The U.S. Department of Justice has dropped its lawsuit against California that sought to require election officials to separate ballots cast by people the department suspected were noncitizens.
The department filed notice Friday night that it was abandoning the case. The action followed the U.S. Supreme Court’s rejection of the Justice Department’s emergency request before Election Day.
The lawsuit concerned roughly 20,000 ballots the department had sought to prevent officials from processing and counting. The Department of Homeland Security compiled the list of voters suspected of lacking U.S. citizenship.
California law bars noncitizens from voting. Voters in the state must sign their ballot envelopes and attest, under penalty of perjury, that they are U.S. citizens.
A federal judge in California had set a Nov. 13 hearing on whether the ballots should be set aside. Assistant U.S. Attorney Julie A. Hamill said the ballots would be mixed with other ballots by that date, leaving “no way to get the challenged ballots segregated.”
Dean Logan, Los Angeles County’s top election official, welcomed the dismissal. He said election officials had repeatedly maintained that state and federal law provide established procedures for checking and contesting voter eligibility.
Bill Essayli said the Justice Department would continue its work concerning election confidence and integrity.
The California case was one of several Justice Department election disputes. Homeland Security arrested dozens of noncitizens over alleged election crimes, while a federal judge temporarily halted DHS election-related field operations amid concerns that the activity intimidated naturalized citizens.
The Justice Department also issued federal grand jury subpoenas to Los Angeles County election officials. A federal judge barred the department from threatening election workers, though the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals later paused that order.
In Washington state, a federal judge blocked the department from compelling officials to set aside about 400 ballots involving suspected noncitizens. A separate Justice Department lawsuit challenging certification of Alaska’s U.S. Senate race was dismissed by a federal judge. Mary Peltola led that race by a few hundred votes as of Monday.
Republicans suffered losses in elections nationwide, and President Donald Trump will serve his final two years with Democrats controlling Congress.