The U.S. Department of Justice on Friday asked a federal court to dismiss its own lawsuit seeking to stop California from counting about 20,000 ballots that the department claimed were sent to noncitizens, until the voters' immigration status could be confirmed.

The request came days after Republicans suffered heavy losses in the midterm elections and roughly a week before a scheduled hearing at which a court-appointed special master was to review the accuracy of the government's list of alleged noncitizens. California officials have argued that the list is outdated and includes eligible voters, a view the presiding federal judge also expressed in a sharply worded order rejecting the government's request.

Ballots already counted

The lawsuit was filed in mid-October, after ballots had been mailed to all 23 million registered voters in the state and hundreds of thousands had already been processed. Once processed, ballots are fully anonymized.

As of early Friday, state election officials reported about 9 million ballots processed, with nearly 5 million still to be counted. In its motion, the Justice Department said that by the time of the hearing, the challenged ballots would already be irreversibly mixed with valid ones, leaving the relief it sought no longer available and making voluntary dismissal necessary.

U.S. District Judge David O. Carter, an appointee of former President Bill Clinton, named the special master in late October, shortly after allowing California to move forward with its election as planned. In his order, Carter wrote that separating ballots at such a late point could disenfranchise citizens and would cause serious disruption to the midterm elections. The special master was also set to examine whether California election officials actually had a way to separate the ballots.

Department vows to keep pursuing cases

The case had been a centerpiece of the Trump administration's push to exert more control over elections run by the states. President Donald Trump has claimed, without offering evidence, that noncitizen voting is widespread, while available data shows such cases are extremely rare.

Justice Department spokesperson Kiersten Pels repeated the department's earlier claim that California chose to protect illegal voters by refusing to set the ballots aside, and asserted that thousands of likely noncitizens remain on the state's voter rolls and cast ballots in the 2026 elections. In a Friday evening statement, the department said it would continue to pursue suspected election law violations through other cases.

The department also moved to support a separate lawsuit, filed in May, alleging that California violates federal voting laws by failing to adequately remove ineligible voters from its rolls. Bill Essayli, the top federal prosecutor in Los Angeles, said the effort is part of a broader commitment to use every available civil and criminal tool to ensure that only eligible U.S. citizens vote.

The Justice Department is still involved in litigation with several immigrant and voting rights organizations seeking to restrict how it uses its list of suspected noncitizens. Separately, California prosecutors have arrested more than 30 noncitizens in recent weeks on charges of illegally registering to vote, and some are also accused of voting in past elections.