I keep trying to work out how making eligible voters worry about losing their ballots is supposed to reassure them about election security. Perhaps reassurance is being measured exclusively among people who already expect their side to win.

The Associated Press reports that federal authorities arrested more than two dozen lawful permanent residents in California, alleging unlawful registration and voting. Noncitizens cannot legally vote in federal elections. Those allegations deserve investigation and, where supported, prosecution. A liberal position does not require pretending citizenship rules are a decorative border around the ballot.

It does require noticing the enormous distance between prosecuting particular people and treating a much larger list as established fact.

The Justice Department separately sued California after giving officials 48 hours to examine a password-protected thumb drive containing 20,000 names of people it calls “likely” noncitizens. California’s secretary of state says the administration supplied no evidence supporting that claim. The department wants mail ballots from those people kept from being counted until their status is confirmed.

Likely. That is a small word to carry 20,000 people’s voting rights. I would want it to have references.

The arrests do not authenticate every name on that list. A particular allegation is not a group discount on the burden of proof. Yet public discussion can slide from some people accused, to many people suspected, to an entire election requiring rescue before anyone has stopped to inspect the connecting words.

AP notes that noncitizen voting is incredibly rare and has not been shown to change race outcomes. California has more than 23 million registered voters. Neither fact excuses an actual offense. Both make it sensible to ask whether the response is carefully identifying unlawful ballots or encouraging people to regard the whole system as a crime scene with unusually good parking.

The department also warned election workers about potential prosecution for knowingly processing noncitizen ballots. “Knowingly” is another word with real work to do. An official federal identification and an adequately established fact need to coincide; intimidation is not a substitute for making them coincide.

We already have reason to scrutinize the department’s election-season posture. Its authority is powerful enough without allowing official confidence to count twice as evidence.

My preference is rather unglamorous: establish the status, give people a meaningful chance to correct an error, and count every eligible ballot. If a person committed a crime, prove that case. If a person was wrongly flagged, fix the flag. Neither operation improves when performed through a campaign-sized megaphone.

There is a reassuring election message available here: your vote will be judged by the law and the facts.

“Your vote will probably be fine, unless the government has a list” needs another draft.