DOJ Demands California Help It Hunt Down Thousands Of ‘Illegal’ Voters Who Don’t Actually Exist
The thing about being in power is that there's not much room left between the floor and the ceiling. The administration can fall, but only so far, because it's still the administration. Conversely, it can only rise so far. The system of checks and balances - even when broken - limits upward trajectories. Bureaucracy generates plenty of friction on its own, which means even when everything aligns perfectly, things still move slowly and rarely reach the heights promised or projected.
Trump's anti-voter operations are banging their collective heads against the wall. The main man continues to insist millions of illegally registered voters exist. The operational side of this obvious lie continues to struggle to convert this hyperbole to reality. Sure, it tries to lay the groundwork for the lies, but the moment anyone pushes back, the administration has been forced to admit it doesn't actually have any facts to back up its accusations.
This attempt to disenfranchise voters, cast doubt on any future election results, and discourage people who might not vote for GOP candidates from heading to the polls is backfiring spectacularly. In California - a state Trump often portrays as being completely overrun by dangerous migrant criminals - the DOJ and DHS have delivered next to nothing. The DOJ brags about its 28 arrests of illegal" voters, but those have happened in a state that has more than 23 million registered voters.
The administration is apparently tiring of having to do all the heavy lifting when it comes to propping up its own false narratives. Under the threat of further legal action by the DOJ, Trump is now demanding California engage in a witch hunt of its own.
The Department of Justice sent letters on Friday to local election officials across California demanding that they help identify potential noncitizens on their voter rolls and set aside their ballots.
The letter - sent to every county in the state, according to a spokesman for the U.S. attorney's office in Los Angeles - also said local officials would risk significant federal scrutiny" if they failed to comply with the Justice Department's demands.
California is, of course, under no legal obligation to do this. Its obligations to ensure the legitimacy of voters are already subject to local laws and other efforts it already engages in. This bizarre demand doesn't have any legal weight behind it. But it does contain a vague threat that the DOJ could easily turn into a reality by directly interfering with the election process during the mid-terms.
It certainly seems like that's what the administration will do, whether or not California officials agree to do Trump's dirty work for him.
Last week, the Trump administration sued California, a heavily Democratic state, seeking to temporarily pre-empt the counting of more than 20,000 mail ballots sent to people it said were suspected of registering to vote for the Nov. 3 election, even though they were not U.S. citizens.
That was the opening shot. The 28 arrests the DHS touted are the second wave. This threat - which comes with a 48-hour compliance expectation - is the latest. There will undoubtedly be more, even if the administration loses its attempt to block more than 20,000 ballots in court.
The counties receiving these lists have been given less than two days to validate hundreds to thousands of issued ballots. The government's demands are already ridiculous, as it expects state officials to prove negatives as well as positives. But they're also ridiculous in a much, much stupider way: it appears the DOJ hadn't bothered to vet its own list of suspected illegal" ballots before sending out its mass email to California election officials.
In rural Inyo County, along the Nevada border, the registrar of voters said the list she was sent included just two people, and neither of them had been issued ballots. Danielle Sexton, the registrar, said her records showed they had never voted anywhere in California.
And in Mendocino County, a rugged stretch on the north coast, the registrar said the list she received was completely wrong.
It's not our voters that were listed," said Katrina Bartolomie, the Mendocino clerk-recorder. It's from another county."
Par for the course for the Trump administration, where high-level officials view themselves as snipers, but always opt for birdshot and sawed-offs during the loadout process. But they know who they work for, so it probably doesn't matter. We should absolutely expect the administration to disrupt the election process and engage in protracted legal battles everywhere the GOP loses a seat. We should also expect the DOJ, DHS, and others to contradict the public assurances they've offered and send feds to polling places to suppress voting in contested precincts.
What's on display here is just the groundwork being laid for future bullshit challenges of the legitimacy of an election that, at this point, looks to give the Democratic Party the control of the House.