The Justice Department has filed 31 lawsuits demanding state voter rolls, lost 26 of them, and won exactly none. So naturally, with ballots already coming back in California, it has decided the next move is to threaten the county clerks who count them. At least 18 counties got letters Friday with a 48-hour deadline and a warning about "legal jeopardy."
A Friday Letter With a Weekend Deadline
Federal prosecutors sent letters to county registrars across California on Friday, according to the Los Angeles County registrar and a letter obtained by The Associated Press. The demand: identify and set aside ballots the Justice Department says may belong to noncitizens, and sequester any ballot where citizenship "cannot be verified." The counties have 48 hours.
The letters want a lot. Social Security numbers, ID information, copies of voter registrations, and more. The letter to San Bernardino County says the government's list includes 1,133 people from that county alone. At least 18 counties have received similar letters, per the L.A. County registrar's office.
First Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli supplied the menace. "Any election official who knowingly processes the ballot of a noncitizen is opening themselves to legal jeopardy," he said. Note the word "knowingly." Note also that the list those officials are being told to act on has been called inaccurate by the people who built it.
The Data Problem Nobody at DOJ Wants to Discuss
Here's the thing about the 20,000 people the government calls "likely" noncitizen voters. California's lawyers say the federal data is unreliable. Sen. Alex Padilla says DOJ has admitted as much. Data on noncitizen voting generally shows it is incredibly rare, difficult to prove, and has never been shown to change the outcome of a race.
So the Justice Department wants county clerks to sequester ballots based on a list it concedes is shaky, on a timeline that would make a pizza delivery guy blush. If the list is wrong, and the state says it is, the people getting their ballots set aside are citizens. Real ones. People who registered, got a ballot in the mail, filled it out, and mailed it back.
The state's filings argue that this risks disenfranchisement of eligible voters and could delay certification of the November results. That's not a side effect. Look at the timing and ask yourself whether it might be the point.
Voting Is Already Underway, in Case Anyone Forgot
California's more than 23 million registered voters received their mail ballots earlier this month. According to the state's legal filings, over 330,000 mail-in ballots have already been counted. This is not a hypothetical future election. People are voting right now.
The feds picked this moment to demand that clerks start quarantining ballots on short notice. Imagine telling a restaurant to pull dishes off the table mid-dinner because someone on a government list might be allergic to them, and the list was compiled by a guy who admits he guessed.
And the pressure is not limited to letters. Earlier this month the government sued L.A. County and the California Secretary of State's office to block them from counting the votes of those 20,000 people. A hearing is scheduled for Tuesday. On Friday, the administration asked the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals to rule on that lawsuit if the district judge doesn't act, and set a Saturday deadline. The courts get a deadline too. Cute.
Twenty-Eight Arrests and a Whole Lot of Press
Earlier in the week, a statewide sweep by federal authorities produced charges against 28 people from that list of 20,000. Some were charged with illegally registering to vote. Some were also charged with illegally voting and lying on naturalization paperwork. Those charges could carry years in prison, and if the allegations are proven, prosecuting them is the job.
But do the math. Twenty-eight out of 20,000 is 0.14 percent. The government built a list of 20,000 names, charged 28 of them, and is now asking counties to treat the other 19,972 as suspects with ballots in a box. The headline-friendly arrests are doing the work that the evidence cannot.
That's a prosecutor's version of fishing with dynamite. You blow up the whole pond and hold up the three fish that float to the top.
A Perfect Record of Losing
The Civil Rights Division has filed 31 lawsuits trying to force states to hand over unredacted copies of their voter rolls. It has lost 26. It has not won a single one. That's not a rough patch. That's a body of work.
The division says it wants to ensure states keep clean voter lists. It has also acknowledged that it intends to share the data with the Department of Homeland Security so the lists can be screened for noncitizens. So the plan is to collect every state's full voter data and hand it to the immigration enforcement apparatus. That's the part that should make you put down your coffee.
Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon sent letters to all 50 states in July threatening criminal action if they knowingly allowed noncitizens to remain on voter rolls. When the courts keep saying no, the threats get louder. That's not a legal strategy. That's what happens when you lose 26 times and decide the judges are the problem, or in this case, the clerks.
The Dingo Take
Think of the oldest trick in a bad landlord's book: when the lease won't hold up in court, you start pounding on the tenant's door at midnight. The Justice Department lost 26 times in front of judges, so now it's showing up at the county clerk's office with a Friday letter and a Sunday deadline. It can't win the argument, so it's trying to win the panic.
And the panic is the product. A clerk who sequesters ballots to avoid "legal jeopardy" has just done the administration's work for it, no court order required. A voter whose ballot gets set aside because their name landed on a list the government itself admits is unreliable has been disenfranchised by threat alone. Nobody has to prove a single thing. The chill does the job.
Sen. Padilla called this "NOT A DRILL," and for once the caps lock is earning its keep. The courts have been clear 26 times running. The election is happening now. Every county clerk in California just got handed a choice between following the law and following a threat from people who have not won a single case. Pay attention to what they do next, because this is the playbook, and California is only the first stop.
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