Overview
- The Justice Department filed a notice on Friday to voluntarily dismiss its October lawsuit that sought to have California set aside roughly 20,000 mail ballots flagged as possible noncitizen votes.
- A Seattle judge issued a 14-day temporary restraining order on Nov. 6 that bars DOJ from directing Washington counties to segregate ballots or from threatening election officials with prosecution over names on a separate federal list.
- Federal judges in California, a Ninth Circuit panel, and the U.S. Supreme Court rejected the administration’s emergency requests, with one district judge warning that last-minute federal interference risked disenfranchising lawful voters.
- The disputed federal lists were created by cross-matching state rolls with DHS/USCIS records and commercial databases, and state officials plus court filings documented errors, lack of disclosed methodology, and a high potential for false positives.
- Although the civil bid to sequester ballots has ended, federal prosecutors continue criminal investigations tied to some names on the lists and scrutiny of the matching process is expected to proceed in other court proceedings.