Feds Subpoena Election Workers Four Days Before Vote

At least four election workers in California have received federal criminal grand jury subpoenas within the last week, CalMatters reported. At least one landed Thursday, hours after a federal judge refused the Justice Department's demand that the state set aside mail-in ballots tied to more than 20,000 registered voters. Election Day is four days out. The people being served aren't politicians. They're the clerks and county staffers who count the ballots.

Who Has the Power

The subpoena sent to three employees at the Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder's office demands records on how the department stops non-citizens from voting, plus "records relating to or involving evidence collected by your agency which tends to indicate an alien has voted in a federal election." An official in Orange County got a similar one, local media reported. NBC News reports the Justice Department has opened a criminal investigation into California itself. Justice Department leadership, per the reporting, is directing top federal prosecutors to pursue criminal subpoenas of local and state officials.

The judge in the California case saw what was happening. "This court believes it would be wise that any threats to state or county employees cease immediately," the judge said during court proceedings. "These threats must stop," he wrote in his Wednesday decision.

What They're Calling "Order"

The Justice Department says nothing to see here. Spokeswoman Kiersten Pels noted that receiving a subpoena doesn't mean someone is a target and that the DOJ generally doesn't subpoena targets. She declined to comment on the "alleged grand jury subpoenas," citing departmental policy. Read that again: the department won't confirm the subpoenas exist, while insisting nobody should feel threatened by them.

Pels added that "voting unlawfully results in criminal exposure." That's the point, isn't it? Criminal exposure. A clerk in an elections office now gets to wonder what a grand jury wants from her four days before a national vote.

Meanwhile, the apparatus has yet to show its work. While the administration has turned up a number of examples of non-citizens registered to vote in federal elections, it has yet to prove widespread illegal voting. The DOJ has appealed the decision blocking it from compelling California to separate ballots associated with those 20,000-plus registrants. Many of those ballots have already been cast by early voters and anonymized, making them virtually impossible to identify.

Who Gets Crushed

The people on the list don't even get to see the list. On Friday, U.S. District Judge James Boasberg, identified by NBC News as Chief U.S. District Judge, ordered the administration to hand over its roster of 20,000 alleged noncitizen registered voters to attorneys for the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights by the end of the day. The Los Angeles-based coalition sued over the government's use of the list. The order exists so its members can find out whether they're on it, which matters for deciding whether the group has standing to sue.

Sit with that. A government compiles a list of names, uses it in federal court, and ordinary people must litigate just to learn if they're included. "It's a list of voter McCarthyism," said Chad Dunn, a lawyer for the group. "If you're a voter in California, you have to wonder are you on this list?"

The Courtroom Trap

Boasberg himself sounded unmoved by the harm. "California has taken no action," he said, pointing to a ruling by another federal judge in California denying the government's request to sequester the list. "If California hasn't acted yet, election is four days away. Where's the injury? Where's the harm?" He was equally skeptical of harm in a similar case the day before.

The harm is a voter lying awake wondering if her name is on a federal list. The harm is an election worker opening a grand jury subpoena at her desk. The courts, though, ask for injury in the form their rules recognize, and until a state or county acts, the machinery says nobody's been hurt.

The California governor's office did not respond to Fox News Digital's request for comment on Friday. The list is due by end of day. Whether the people on it ever get a straight answer about why they're there is another matter.