California votes.
asserted
California → vote → ?
Click here to listen to this article -
- Trump’s lawyers begged the appeals court to take their flimsy case away from the judge who had already promised to rule on their requests on Tuesday.
asserted
who → click → Tuesday
- The judges did not seem impressed by the arguments, questioning more than once if they even had jurisdiction.
asserted
they → seem → jurisdiction
My fellow Californians, let us begin with an intelligence test.
asserted
us → let → test
Our great state has been voting since early October.
asserted
state → vote → October
Folks have been mailing in their ballots, dropping them off at collection sites and even showing up at in-person centers.
asserted
Folks → mail → centers
So raise your hand if you know — or even just assume — elections officials have been doing something with those ballots as they arrive, other than just throwing them in a pile.
asserted
they → raise → pile
On Sunday, the lawyers for the DOJ managed to get a three-judge panel of the Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit to convene a rare emergency hearing because, OMG, people are actually voting and California is processing ballots!
asserted
California → manage → ballots
Who could have possibly known?
uncertain
Who → know → ?
Even though it’s literally law that counties count ballots in a timely manner; even though it’s happened in every other election; even though the daily tallies of how many ballots are received are posted online by the secretary of State; even though there are live camera feeds of ballots being processed in Los Angeles — somehow the U.S. government didn’t know this normal election procedure was happening, it claimed.
asserted
it → ’ → Angeles
Two judges questioned the Justice Department’s lawyer about how the Trump administration’s position squared with the law.
It wasn’t until late Friday, when DOJ lawyers read a filing by California DOJ lawyers laying out that L.A. is, like, actually opening mail-in ballots, that the U.S. DOJ realized that ballots are being opened.
asserted
ballots → question → ballots
That seemed “absurd on its face,” argued California Deputy Solicitor Gen. Samuel P. Siegel.
asserted
Siegel → seem → face
Armed with this previously unknowable information, Trump’s lawyers were begging the appeals court to take their flimsy, constitutionally questionable case away from the judge who had already promised to rule on their requests on Tuesday and immediately give them an injunction to further their election conspiracy claims.
uncertain
who → arm → claims
Most folks are aware of the background of this drama, but here’s the quick recap.
asserted
recap → ’ → drama
President Trump for years has falsely but incessantly claimed that Democrats are colluding with undocumented people to help them sneak into the country in exchange for illegally voting in mass numbers for Democrats.
asserted
them → claim → Democrats
This is not happening, but the president is obsessed with this conspiracy, so much so that he is weaponizing the Department of Justice to attack states, California in particular, in a bid to prove his delusions correct, and perhaps as a bonus, undermine democracy.
asserted
delusions → happen → democracy
A few months ago, the DOJ came to the state of California and claimed it had a list of 190,000 people it believed were illegally registered to vote.
asserted
it → come → people
That list has since dropped to 20,000.
asserted
list → drop → 20,000
But with all the investigative power of the government hard at work on this, only 28 people in California have been indicted by the feds during this no-holds-barred effort, and it looks as though not all of those cases will hold up.
asserted
all → indict → cases
Undeterred, Trump lawyers tried to get a California judge to order the state (and Los Angeles) to set aside ballots that it claims to have doubts about.
uncertain
it → try → doubts
They asked the judge in that case for a temporary restraining order forcing L.A. County to do that, and the judge agreed to rule on that request early next week, in an already-expedited fashion.
asserted
judge → ask → fashion
But then the Trump lawyers learned about all that ballot processing and demanded the judge instead rule by Saturday afternoon — though the reasoning here seems iffy.
asserted
reasoning → learn → afternoon
When the federal judge assigned to the case didn’t rule by Saturday, an absurd ask that didn’t even allow enough time for lawyers to file briefs, the feds ran to the 9th Circuit, claiming that failing to rule on Saturday was a de facto denial of their request.
asserted
failing → assign → request
Basically, it seems the Trump lawyers were arguing two things.
asserted
lawyers → seem → things
First, that once ballots are counted, they can’t be uncounted, and if there are illegal ballots, that hurts all voters.
asserted
that → count → voters
But again, there is no evidence this is happening in any widespread fashion, and the lists of potential vote scofflaws compiled by the government have been shown to be error-ridden.
asserted
lists → be → government
They may also involve the use of a mysterious non-government “third party” to gather the information that not even the Trump lawyers could identify Sunday.
uncertain
lawyers → involve → that
DOJ lawyers also claimed they had just learned that once a ballot is taken out of the envelope, there was no way to reconnect that ballot to the voter who cast it — because our votes are anonymous.
asserted
votes → claim → it
Therefore, the 20,000 ballots had to be grabbed before they were separated from the documents inside.
asserted
they → have → documents
The lawyers did not explain why they needed to know how a person voted to confirm they illegally voted.
asserted
they → explain → ?
The envelopes are retained by county elections officials, but apparently the Trump lawyers feel it’s critical to tie them to particular votes.
asserted
it → retain → votes
Federal prosecutors announced voter fraud charges against 28 Californians.
asserted
prosecutors → announce → Californians
State Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta said the small number shows “there is no widespread voter fraud.”
asserted
number → say → ?
But here’s the thing — there are simply not enough illegal voters to sway a Los Angeles election, or a California one for that matter.
asserted
thing → ’ → matter
We have a system to ferrets out problematic ballots right now, and a separate criminal system that can hold illegal voters accountable.
asserted
voters → have → ballots
Two weeks before an election isn’t a time to demand ballots be withheld — unless you’re trying to undermine trust.
asserted
you → demand → trust
The appellate judges did not seem impressed by the federal laywers’ arguments, questioning more than once if the 9th Circuit even had jurisdiction since states are in charge of elections, not the federal government.
asserted
states → seem → government
You know, the one the don’t-tread-on-me types love that reads: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States.
asserted
powers → know → States
We should expect a ruling sooner rather than later, but the real question remains, why the emergency?
asserted
question → expect → ruling
The DOJ is involved in another voting lawsuit in Washington, D.C., where the plaintiffs, led by the UCLA Voting Rights Project, have asked for a restraining order of their own stopping the government from creating national lists of who it thinks should vote, and using janky, secretive information gathering to do it.
asserted
it → involve → it
…and 15 more, not listed.
The Aporia
