President Trump’s Justice Department just widened its California election-integrity fight in a major way.

Federal prosecutors sent demand letters across the state on Friday, giving county election officials 48 hours to help verify people the government believes may be noncitizens — and to isolate associated mail ballots while those checks are completed.

This is no longer a dispute confined to Sacramento or Los Angeles. The federal government is taking its demand directly to local registrars while voting is already underway.

The new county-by-county escalation was reported Friday evening:

The Associated Press reported that the letters direct counties to provide identifying records that could help federal and state officials determine whether the flagged registrants are citizens. Counties were also asked to sequester ballots tied to people whose citizenship could not be confirmed.

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At least 18 counties had received letters when the report was published, and the Los Angeles County registrar said the demands carried a 48-hour deadline. A hearing in the federal government’s underlying case is scheduled for Tuesday.

The key word is suspected.

The federal list is not a court ruling that every person on it is ineligible. Citizenship still has to be checked person by person, and a ballot set aside during verification is not the same thing as a ballot permanently rejected.

First Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli put the federal position on the record:

Essayli said federal agencies obtained California’s voter list, compared it with government records, and told election officials which registrants they believe are noncitizens. He warned that knowingly processing a noncitizen ballot can create federal criminal exposure.

That warning comes after more than a week of open conflict between California and the Trump administration.

The U.S. Department of Justice sued California on October 15 after federal agencies identified more than 20,000 people they believed were likely noncitizens registered to participate in the federal election. The complaint asks a court to require temporary segregation of associated vote-by-mail ballots until citizenship can be independently verified.

Federal lawyers said California had been given a chance to review the names and protect disputed ballots before tabulation. California officials rejected the demand, challenged the reliability and legal basis of the list, and argued that the government had not justified sidelining thousands of voters on an accelerated timetable.

The government says immigration and law-enforcement databases produced the names after comparisons with California registration records. It also argues that the state’s universal vote-by-mail system makes timing critical because ballots had already been sent to people on the disputed list.

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Four days later, the enforcement fight became concrete.

The Justice Department announced charges against 28 lawful permanent residents in a coordinated action called Operation Protect the Vote. The alleged conduct is not identical in every case.

Prosecutors accused some defendants of voting as noncitizens, some of fraudulent registration, and some of making false statements in naturalization proceedings. Those are allegations, not convictions, and every defendant remains presumed innocent unless proven guilty.

Federal officials said 11 defendants were arrested when the operation was announced and described all 28 as lawful permanent residents, commonly called green-card holders. The charging documents cover different years and different alleged acts, so the evidence against each defendant will have to stand on its own in court.

The criminal cases do not prove that all 20,000 people on the broader list are noncitizens. They do establish that federal prosecutors say they found specific cases serious enough to charge.

Meanwhile, the election clock is running. Los Angeles County announced Saturday that its vote centers are now open:

That is why the 48-hour timetable is so explosive. Ballots are moving now, while federal and state officials are still fighting over which records are reliable and who has the authority to act.

The Los Angeles Times reported that a spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Los Angeles said 57 of California’s 58 counties were served, with Los Angeles excluded because it had already received notice. The letters sought registration records that could help determine citizenship and warned officials about processing ballots connected to suspected noncitizens before verification.

County officials called the demands intimidating and legally questionable, while the federal side argued that local officials had been placed on notice of a potential crime. The statewide reach turns a legal dispute over one large voter list into an immediate operational decision for election offices from one end of California to the other.

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California’s leaders are entitled to challenge federal evidence in court. They are not entitled to pretend citizenship eligibility is an optional question.

Every lawful citizen’s ballot deserves protection. Every person wrongly flagged deserves a fast and accurate correction.

Those goals do not conflict.

The clean answer is verification before tabulation: check the records, protect eligible voters, isolate genuinely disputed ballots long enough to determine the truth, and count every lawful vote.

President Trump’s Justice Department has now put that demand directly in front of county officials across California. The next 48 hours will show whether they cooperate, fight, or force the courts to decide.

This is a Guest Post from our friends over at WLTReport. View the original article here.

 

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