Florida officials spent months insisting that some 2,600 people on the state's voter rolls were actually not US citizens and needed to be purged from the rolls. They even fought the federal government over the right to access a special database so they can prove it.
But after getting access to that database, Florida discovered that only 207 people were not citizens and should not have been voting.
The announcement came on the same day that the state reached an agreement with voting groups challenging the purge.
Under the agreement, the state will contact the remaining 2,400 voters and tell them that they are still eligible.
The state did get one win on the voting front this week.
This week the Obama administration also agreed to a proposal to reduce the number of early voting days in five Florida counties covered by the federal Voting Rights Act.
The Justice Department decision ends a lengthy battle over a controversial election law passed by the GOP-controlled Florida Legislature last year.
The department late Wednesday notified a federal court in Washington, D.C., that it approved a Florida plan to provide 96 hours of early voting over eight days in Hillsborough, Collier, Hendry, Hardee and Monroe counties.
Justice Department or federal court approval is required for any changes in election laws affecting those counties due to past racial discrimination.
The D.C. court had previously raised questions about Florida's plan to cut the number early voting days.
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The Associated Press contributed to this report.