Feds Eyed 20,930 Names. 42% Weren't Even on the Rolls

Eight thousand, eight hundred and eighty names. That's how many of the 20,930 people the Department of Justice demanded California treat as possible illegal voters don't correspond to anyone in the state's current voter file, according to two data analysts from UCLA's Voting Rights Project. Forty-two percent of the list. At least 22 are U.S. citizens. And the analysts found nearly 7,500 naturalized citizens were "highly likely" to be incorrectly flagged.

The analysis only exists because a federal judge on Friday ordered the administration to hand the list over to the plaintiffs. Left to its own devices, the apparatus would have kept it sealed. The analysts' filing, part of a suit brought with the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights (CHIRLA), landed Saturday, two days before Election Day.

Who Has the Power

The DOJ had demanded that California election officials separate the ballots of those 20,930 names during the vote count on Election Day. Multiple judges have rejected the demand as unconstitutional and a threat to democracy. U.S. District Judge David O. Carter in Los Angeles refused the request, writing: "Constitutional rights and our democracy are at stake. The public interest favors their protection." The Ninth Circuit twice declined to block his ruling.

Then there's the Department of Homeland Security. Under a preliminary injunction granted October 21 by U.S. District Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín, DHS and immigration agencies are barred, in nine states, from certain election-related field operations and interviews involving people officials know, suspect, or reasonably should suspect are U.S. citizens. The states are California, Connecticut, Georgia, Missouri, Nevada, New York, Pennsylvania, Washington and Wisconsin.

Beau Tremitiere, counsel at Protect Democracy, which represents the plaintiffs, said eligible voters in those states "can cast their ballots without fear of armed immigration agents showing up at their door." Armed agents at the door. That's the thing the injunction is meant to stop.

Late Friday, U.S. District Judge Trina L. Thompson granted labor unions representing California poll workers a sweeping temporary order barring DOJ and DHS officials nationwide from threatening state and local election workers with prosecution for processing or counting ballots in compliance with governing election laws. "Election Day is around the corner. Ballots have already been issued. Americans have already begun voting. Workers have already begun processing ballots," Thompson wrote. The order is temporary and does not resolve the underlying lawsuit.

Who Gets Crushed

Poll workers. Naturalized citizens. People whose names landed on a list nobody bothered to check. The federal government didn't need a conviction or even a confirmed case to put them in the crosshairs; it needed a spreadsheet.

DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin said on Fox News on Saturday, "We're investigating over 300,000 cases." That figure refers to cases under investigation, not confirmed illegal voting. Trump, meanwhile, claimed on social media the DOJ found "20,000, but potentially Hundreds of Thousands, and maybe even Millions" of fraudulent votes. The one list the public has actually seen, the 20,930 names, fell apart under a pair of analysts' scrutiny.

Gov. Gavin Newsom sent a letter to federal judges across California Saturday expressing "grave concerns federal agents will seek search warrants to seize ballots and ballot materials before the election results are certified."

The Court Trap

A federal appeals court left the restrictions in place on Friday, October 30, declining to have a larger group of Ninth Circuit judges reconsider a three-judge panel's refusal to stay the injunction. The panel concluded the government had not demonstrated irreparable harm. Seven judges dissented. Judge Eric Tung wrote a 33-page dissent: "By enjoining the government from even investigating illegal voting, the district court departed from its limited role." He added that the court "equated investigation with intimidation."

A Justice Department spokesperson called Thompson's ruling part of a "two-track system of justice" and said: "The Department is reviewing the order and evaluating all options." DOJ spokesperson Kiersten V. Pels wrote: "Every ballot cast by an ineligible voter cancels out the vote of an American citizen. The Department makes no apology for protecting those votes."

Look at how the whole fight is staged. Rights that people supposedly hold are granted, paused, appealed and reargued by judges, temporarily, while the underlying cases grind on. The relief runs through Tuesday. California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta, Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) and SEIU International President April Verrett praised the rulings. The temporary order protects poll workers today; whether it protects anyone after the ballots are counted is a question for the next hearing.

The midterms are two days away. The lists, the injunctions and the appeals all point at the same booth, with the same people in the line.