Justice Department moves to dismiss California ballot lawsuit
U.S. PoliticsWell-covered
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The Facts
- The Justice Department moved Friday to voluntarily dismiss its lawsuit against California.
- The lawsuit sought to stop California from counting roughly 20,000 ballots tied to alleged noncitizens.
- The Justice Department sought to have California and Los Angeles County set aside the challenged ballots.
- The Justice Department said the election’s completion made its requested relief impossible.
- A federal district judge and the Ninth Circuit rejected the Justice Department’s request.
- The Supreme Court denied the administration’s appeal without noted dissents.
- California officials said the voter list was outdated and included legitimate voters.
- A special master had been scheduled to evaluate the accuracy of the voter list.
Context
Why did the Justice Department seek dismissal?
The department said that because the midterm election had concluded, the challenged ballots would be commingled with lawful ballots before the scheduled hearing, making the requested segregation impossible. Los Angeles Times Anadolu Ajansı San Francisco Chron…
What had courts ruled before the dismissal request?
U.S. District Judge David O. Carter and a Ninth Circuit panel rejected the Justice Department’s request, and the Supreme Court denied the administration’s appeal. Los Angeles Times Anadolu Ajansı TRT World
What was disputed about the list of voters?
California officials said the list was outdated and included legitimate voters; a special master had been scheduled to assess its accuracy. CBS News HuffPost AccessWDUN
Where Left and Right agree, and where they split
- Where Left and Right agree
- Neither side disputes that the dismissal rests on the election's completion making relief impossible, leaving the underlying question of the ballots' eligibility factually unresolved.
- Where Left and Right split
- Courts correctly declining to set aside ballots without proof, or a noncitizen-voting question that mootness left permanently unanswered.
- Why they won’t converge
- The divide is one of values: whether judicial rejection of the DOJ's request settles the matter, or whether any unverified citizenship question on the rolls remains intolerable regardless of what courts decided.
How left and right read it
The burden of proof belongs to whoever wants ballots set aside, not to the voters who cast them. That standard was never met here: California officials called the list outdated and said it swept in legitimate voters, a special master was lined up to test its accuracy, and a district judge, the Ninth Circuit, and the Supreme Court all declined to intervene. Why was the evidence supposed to come last?
“The case was at the forefront of the Trump administration's effort to assert control over state-run elections across the country, which Mr. Trump has said are rife with illegal voting without providing evidence.” — CBS News
Who may cast a ballot is the one boundary a self-governing nation cannot leave blurry. The dismissal rests only on the completed election making relief impossible, so whether those roughly 20,000 ballots were tied to noncitizens goes unanswered, even as California insists the list was merely outdated. Examine the rolls anyway. The accuracy review the special master was scheduled to conduct should still happen.
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Independent coverage (22)
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