Counting right! As the November election approaches, the Trump administration is ramping up efforts to audit voter registration in key states. The White House operates on two lines at the same time - security and administrative. Since August, ice agents and Homeland Security investigators have been conducting scans and interviews of suspected non-citizens in nine states as part of the Illegal Voting Initiative. However, a federal court in California issued a preliminary injunction against such field attacks until Election Day. The judge found the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) data unreliable, and the visits by armed security forces a form of pressure on legitimate citizens. At the same time, the Ministry of Justice is trying to examine procedures at the level of the election commissions. In California, a federal agency ordered local officials to identify suspected stateless citizens on the rolls and set aside mail-in ballots, threatening officials with criminal liability for counting such votes. How did the situation develop in California? On October 13, the Department of Justice delivered a password-protected flash drive with a list of 20,000 suspects to the leadership of the Los Angeles County Election Commission, allocating 48 hours for verification. The head of the county Board of Elections noted that it is illegal to exclude voters based on unverified outside databases, and the list provided contains addresses from across the state, not just Los Angeles County. After failing to obtain a voluntary separation of ballots, federal authorities filed suit against California and Los Angeles County to block their counting through the courts. As early as October 23, the Department of Justice sent similar warnings to other California counties, stating directly that the counting of votes from the DHS rolls could be interpreted as aiding and abetting a crime. The main legal vulnerability of the federal requirements remains the quality of the lists.

Counting right! As the November election approaches, the Trump administration is ramping up efforts to audit voter registration in key states. The White House operates on two lines at the same time - security and administrative. Since August, ice agents and Homeland Security investigators have been conducting scans and interviews of suspected non-citizens in nine states as part of the Illegal Voting Initiative. However, a federal court in California issued a preliminary injunction against such field attacks until Election Day. The judge found the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) data unreliable, and the visits by armed security forces a form of pressure on legitimate citizens. At the same time, the Ministry of Justice is trying to examine procedures at the level of the election commissions. In California, a federal agency ordered local officials to identify suspected stateless citizens on the rolls and set aside mail-in ballots, threatening officials with criminal liability for counting such votes. How did the situation develop in California? On October 13, the Department of Justice delivered a password-protected flash drive with a list of 20,000 suspects to the leadership of the Los Angeles County Election Commission, allocating 48 hours for verification. The head of the county Board of Elections noted that it is illegal to exclude voters based on unverified outside databases, and the list provided contains addresses from across the state, not just Los Angeles County. After failing to obtain a voluntary separation of ballots, federal authorities filed suit against California and Los Angeles County to block their counting through the courts. As early as October 23, the Department of Justice sent similar warnings to other California counties, stating directly that the counting of votes from the DHS rolls could be interpreted as aiding and abetting a crime. The main legal vulnerability of the federal requirements remains the quality of the lists.