A Thumb Drive and a Sticky Note Are Not Grounds to Freeze Californians’ Votes

Every eligible American has a stake in an election count that excludes people who are not allowed to vote. That principle is not in dispute in California or anywhere else. What is in dispute is whether the federal government can demand, three weeks before Election Day, that a state set aside ballots based on a list it will not fully explain, delivered on a thumb drive with the password handwritten on a sticky note.

On Tuesday, the Justice Department’s acting deputy attorney general gave California’s secretary of state and Los Angeles County’s top election official two days to review that list and promise to wall off the mail ballots of the people on it. When they declined, the department sued on Thursday. Officials say the letter did not even specify how many names were involved.

Dean Logan, Los Angeles County’s registrar, refused to plug in the drive, saying it violated his office’s data privacy and security rules and was not a secure way to move voter information. That is not obstruction; it is what election officials are supposed to do with unverified files from outside their systems. He added a point that should guide everyone here: decisions about a voter’s eligibility must rest on verifiable information, not on unconfirmed data matches.

Experience gives good reason for caution. When Nevada reviewed 185 people flagged by the Department of Homeland Security as possible noncitizens, every one turned out to be a citizen. Evidence and prosecutions show that noncitizen voting is rare. And the Justice Department has lost more than two dozen consecutive court cases over its demands for state voter data, a record that suggests a strategy built more on pressure than on law. Federal law also generally forbids systematic changes to voter lists within 90 days of a federal election, a rule written precisely to keep last-minute sweeps from catching eligible voters.

The department’s best argument deserves a fair statement. It says it is not asking that any vote be canceled, only that questionable ballots be held aside until citizenship is confirmed, which would protect the count without throwing anything out. In theory, that is a modest request.

In practice, a ballot frozen weeks before an election is a ballot at risk. Californians who are citizens, perhaps naturalized years ago or flagged because of an outdated record, would have their votes suspended on the strength of a list no election official has vetted, with no clear process for clearing their names before results are certified. The burden of a bureaucratic error would fall on the voter, not the government that made it.

This is the kind of concentrated, last-minute exercise of federal power over state-run elections that should worry voters of every party. The courts should insist that Washington show its evidence, through proper channels and with time to check it, before a single lawful ballot is set aside. Until then, California officials are right to keep counting, and every eligible voter in the state should return their ballot with confidence.