Count Every Lawful Ballot

Seven days before Election Day, the federal government has launched a campaign that asks Americans to doubt their own elections. In a few days it has offered a $1 million reward for tips on voter fraud, asked California and Washington state to set aside thousands of ballots, and sued Alaska to delay certification of a Senate race. The common theme is a claim of fraud that courts keep refusing to accept.

Start with the reward. The president said he would pay $1 million for tips that lead to an arrest and conviction, covering past elections and this year’s midterms. He did not say where the money would come from. As NBC News noted in reporting the offer, there is no evidence of widespread voter fraud in American elections. A bounty does not find fraud. It encourages accusations, and it tells election workers that their neighbors are being paid to suspect them.

The ballot fights are more serious. A federal appeals court in San Francisco turned down the administration’s attempt to force California to set aside about 20,000 mail ballots from voters the Justice Department says may be noncitizens, and said the claimed emergency was, at least in part, of the government’s own making. In Washington state, the department has asked officials to set aside about 400 ballots. In Alaska, it asked a court to block certification if Senator Dan Sullivan narrowly loses, citing a candidate of a similar name, though the state’s supreme court has already ruled that the other candidate may remain on the ballot.

The strongest case on the other side deserves a fair hearing. Only citizens may vote in federal elections, and officials are right to check rolls. The federal prosecutor in the Washington case has called the roughly 400 names the tip of the iceberg, CBS News reported. If those registrations are real, they should be examined and, where appropriate, prosecuted.

But verification and disruption are different things. Careful checking happens before ballots are cast, with notice to voters and a chance for them to prove their eligibility. Demanding days before an election that a state quarantine thousands of ballots puts lawful voters at risk of having their votes discarded because of a database mismatch. Lists built from administrative records can contain errors, and a mismatch is not proof of ineligibility. A system that sets those ballots aside first and sorts them out later will not fix mistakes in time for them to count.

The courts have been doing their job. The judges in California were skeptical at the hearing and then rejected the request. Alaska’s own justices had already decided the question the federal suit is trying to reopen. That is how institutions are supposed to work, but it should not have to.

A better approach is dull and effective: keep voter rolls up to date through state-run processes, publish audits, and prosecute actual violations through the usual channels. Most of all, count every lawful ballot that arrives on time. Americans who are worried about prices, health care and the Iran war should not also have to wonder whether their votes will survive a late-October lawsuit.