DOJ lawsuit failed to prove any ‘voter cast an unlawful ballot,’ California says in motion to dismiss

A Department of Justice lawsuit seeking to block California from letting 20,000 alleged noncitizens vote should be tossed out because the federal government failed to prove any person cast a ballot illegally, the state said in a motion to dismiss Wednesday.

California argues that the premise of the DOJ’s lawsuit lies entirely on “a chain of possibilities,” rather than evidence of unlawful voting in Los Angeles and throughout the Golden State. The state previously argued that the DOJ’s lawsuit “borders on the absurd.”

The federal government supposes that “registered voters identified through federal database matching are noncitizens; that some will cast ballots; that the County will count those ballots,” but it never provides evidence for those accusations. Without proof, the DOJ cannot demonstrate it is being harmed by California’s refusal to withhold ballots from the 20,000 people accused of being noncitizens and therefore has no grounds to bring its lawsuit.

The standoff between California and Trump’s DOJ kicked off last week when the department gave state and county officials a thumb drive containing a list of 20,000 suspected noncitizens unlawfully registered to vote. Two days later, the DOJ sued both Los Angeles County and the state for refusing the government’s demand to block those voters from casting a ballot in the midterms.

The DOJ then escalated the fight by asking a federal judge to block California from tabulating ballots cast by voters on the alleged noncitizen list — despite culling the names on the list from unverified sources. The Trump administration Monday arrested 11 people on the list, and charged 28, alleging that they illegally registered to vote.

Trump’s DOJ also claimed that Los Angeles County had obstructed a federal investigation into noncitizens on its voter roll. But the state said that the government has no evidence to back that claim up. 

The case was assigned to U.S. District Judge David O. Carter, who previously ruled against the Trump administration in a lawsuit demanding to see California’s unredacted voter rolls, which contain sensitive personal information like Social Security numbers and birthdates.

Carter has already scheduled the first hearing in the lawsuit for Tuesday, but California is asking him to rule on its motion to dismiss by Friday.

“What the Executive principally alleges is that federal authorities cannot complete their own investigations before the election concludes,” the state’s motion to dismiss reads. “That is not an injury attributable to the County.”