Trump's Justice Department Breaks With Tradition to Intervene in the Midterms, Reuters Reports
On the eve of Tuesday's vote, Reuters reports the Justice Department has sued over ballots in California, pressed a same-name candidate case in Alaska — where a judge dismissed its suit on Sunday — and plans about 1,000 election monitors nationwide. Illinois is not among the five states that received the department's noncitizen voter letters.
The Justice Department has intervened directly in Tuesday's midterm elections in ways that break with decades of practice, Reuters reported Monday, in a series of moves that have already drawn court rulings in two states before a single Election Day vote is cast. In California, the department sought to set aside mail-in ballots from about 20,000 voters it alleges are likely noncitizens ineligible to vote, and demanded records in a related criminal probe. In Alaska, it intensified a criminal investigation into whether a Senate candidate who shares a name with Republican incumbent Dan Sullivan entered the race to confuse voters.
The courts have so far rejected the department's election-eve lawsuits in both states, Reuters reported. A federal judge in California rejected the bid to block the 20,000 ballots on October 28, saying the move would "wreak havoc" on the November 3 elections and questioning the reliability of the list, and a federal appeals court upheld that ruling on October 30. In Alaska, U.S. District Judge Sharon Gleason dismissed the department's certification suit on Sunday, finding the state could not conduct the requested probe while preserving the secrecy of ballots. The department has appealed the Alaska decision. Attorney General Todd Blanche says the department's efforts are lawful and aim to protect the integrity of the vote.
For Chicago voters, the immediate facts are narrower. Illinois is not among the five states — California, Washington, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Nevada — that had received Justice Department letters about alleged noncitizens on their rolls as of October 30, according to a Justice Department document seen by Reuters. The department does plan to deploy about 1,000 monitors nationwide on Election Day, roughly triple the number used in the last midterms, a move some local officials worry could intimidate voters and the department says is baseless concern. The Constitution assigns election administration to the states, and a Reuters investigation earlier this year found 129 cases in which noncitizens were federally charged with voting illegally since 1996 — context both sides will carry into a Tuesday that decides control of Congress, where Democrats need a net gain of four seats in each chamber.
