Justice Department Told To Stop Helping Quite So Threateningly

A federal judge has barred the Justice Department from threatening or coercing election workers to stop processing ballots. The late-Friday order also bars demands that local officials separate or refuse to count ballots the federal government considers potentially ineligible, the Associated Press reports.

A useful addition to the election office’s instructions. Check the envelope. Follow the counting procedure. If the Department of Justice becomes agitated, do not attempt to feed it another jurisdiction.

The government says California sent ballots to about 20,000 people who may not be citizens. California officials dispute the reliability of that list and say it likely includes many citizens. These are disputed identifications, not 20,000 established illegal votes.

This is why you check a list before you start leaning on the people holding it. A spreadsheet is not improved by standing behind the user with a prosecutor. That is not verification. That is Clippy with subpoena power.

It looks like you're trying to conduct an election. Would you like assistance becoming personally nervous about it?

Los Angeles’s top federal prosecutor, Bill Essayli, warned that officials who knowingly process a noncitizen’s ballot expose themselves to legal jeopardy. Knowingly is doing necessary work there. Being handed a disputed list does not install a tiny immigration court inside the ballot counter’s head.

Where is the employee supposed to put that court? Between the stapler and the coffee? Does the office need a second break room for all the legal expertise that federal officials apparently expect to materialize when they use a sufficiently serious tone?

The department says enforcing the prohibition on noncitizen voting is its job. Fine. Do that job. Do not arrive at someone else’s job with unresolved identifications and attempt to frighten the missing evidence into existence.

The appeals court had already rejected the department’s request to set California ballots aside earlier Friday. In a 2–1 ruling, a majority including a Trump-appointed judge and a Biden-appointed judge found no feasible way to identify and separate specific ballots without potentially catastrophic effects on the system.

Election officials say processed votes cannot be matched back to the people who cast them. Millions of Californians have voted; hundreds of thousands of ballots have been processed.

Oh, the secret ballot is being secret. Has anyone informed management? Perhaps if we threaten the filing cabinet, it will remember who voted for whom.

You can almost see the equipment request: one scanner, two printers and a machine that reverses anonymity. The last item may take longer to procure. Office supplies has foolishly concentrated on objects that exist.

And then, after the court rejected the requested ballot separation, another order had to address threats and coercion against the people doing the counting. The wider case is not finished. The federal helpers have nevertheless reached the stage where their help needs a judicial boundary around it.

These workers are trying to count. Have you ever tried to count while somebody keeps interrupting? Now imagine the interruption has a Justice Department badge and you cannot simply tell it to go bother another fucking room.

The office needs enough staff, functioning equipment and a chance to finish the arithmetic. Instead, it has acquired the adult equivalent of supervising a school trip, except the child touching everything can announce a criminal investigation.

Do we need a sticker system? The voters get “I Voted.” The federal officials can work toward “I Let Someone Finish.”