Too Big To Ignore: Will of the People Weekly

With Election Day five weeks out, the Supreme Court handed Trump a purge tool on Friday, letting his Homeland Security Department resume running Americans’ Social Security data through a citizenship database that has already flagged eligible voters as noncitizens, hours before it blocked Missouri Republicans’ gerrymandered map for a third and final time. Meanwhile, Trump’s Justice Department has made voter-fraud prosecutions a “tier one priority” even as Nevada found that every one of the 185 voters DHS called noncitizens is a citizen. This week, briefs are due in the fight over Trump’s federal citizen lists, the Supreme Court begins sorting a docket that includes a Republican bid to toss Pennsylvania mail ballots, and more. What happens next is up to us, not them. When all of us show up, the will of the people wins. Try and stop us.

In the Administration

• Trump’s Justice Department made voter-fraud prosecutions a “tier one priority” and promised more charges every week until Election Day. A DOJ official told reporters last Tuesday that prosecutions will “rise significantly each week” through the election, and Homeland Security Investigations agents who normally work smuggling and trafficking cases have been shifted to the hunt, with 1,600 open cases. A Votebeat review of the 70 people charged this year found no sign of any organized effort to cheat.
• Trump’s White House first wanted every mail ballot sent by certified mail, so voters would have to be home to sign for it. ProPublica reported today that the Postal Service killed the idea as impossible, but the White House then rebuffed its efforts to soften the final order and insisted that a single mismatched envelope sink an entire mailing. “If four addresses don’t align in a mailing of one million, 999,996 other people don’t get their ballot tomorrow,” a former postal official said.
• Trump’s administration plans to use Americans’ passport records to check voter eligibility. The Justice Department disclosed in a court filing last Tuesday that the State Department will publish a notice, possibly as soon as Oct. 22, to share its passport records system with other federal agencies for purposes including “voter eligibility.” Those records hold the personal data of everyone who has ever applied for a U.S. passport.
• Trump’s cybersecurity agency released its plan to protect the midterms just 40 days before Election Day. The 13-page plan names no specific threat from Russia, Iran or China, and the administration has cut about 1,000 CISA employees and $10 million from programs including one for state and local election officials. “For them to come in five weeks before the election, yeah, nice effort,” said Nevada Secretary of State Cisco Aguilar.

In Congress

• House Republicans have gone home and won’t vote again until after Election Day. GOP leaders canceled the House’s last two September voting weeks, and the chamber is now in a district work period with its next votes expected Nov. 9. “This Congress has done phenomenal work,” Speaker Mike Johnson said.
• California’s senators asked their state attorney general to investigate whether Trump’s DHS broke state law by impersonating voters. Sens. Alex Padilla and Adam Schiff urged Rob Bonta last week to examine whistleblower allegations that immigration officers posed as Californians to get into the state’s voter records while working under quotas of 40 people a day. DHS’s own training materials, they wrote, admit the investigations will sweep in U.S. citizens.
• Senate Republicans are holding a hearing Tuesday on Jack Smith, the special counsel who charged Trump with trying to overturn the 2020 election. The Judiciary Committee’s oversight hearing will examine “Jack Smith’s authority and Republicans and related matters.” No other Senate hearing this week touches elections.

In the Courts

• Department of Homeland Security v. League of Women Voters (U.S. Supreme Court)
  • On Friday, the Court let Trump’s DHS resume using its overhauled SAVE citizenship database while the case continues, which a federal judge blocked in June after finding it violated federal privacy law and that states were “actively removing United States citizens from voter rolls based on inaccurate information.” In Texas, about one in five of the voters the system flagged as possible noncitizens turned out to be citizens. Justice Jackson wrote that “burdening or disenfranchising even a few lawful voters” outweighs any harm to the government. Federal law prohibits mass purges close to Election Day.
• Electronic Privacy Information Center v. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services et al. (U.S. District Court, Maryland)
  • EPIC sued to stop Trump’s DHS from building “Confirmed Citizen Lists” for every state out of Social Security and other federal records. At a hearing Friday, a Justice Department lawyer told Judge Paula Xinis, “I can’t tell you we won’t have a live portal before the midterms,” despite DHS’s earlier pledge not to launch within 60 days of an election. “That is very concerning,” she said. Both sides’ briefs are due Friday, Oct. 2.
• DSCC et al. v. ICE et al. (U.S. District Court, D.C.)
  • The DSCC, DCCC and Democratic Governors Association, joined by Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries, sued Trump’s ICE, DHS and FBI last Wednesday to bar armed federal officers from polling places, drop boxes and anywhere ballots are counted, from the start of early voting through ballot curing. It is the second such suit in a week, after the NAACP-led case filed Sept. 18.
• People Not Politicians v. Onder (U.S. Supreme Court)
  • For the third time this month, the justices blocked Missouri Republicans from using their gerrymandered map, pausing an 8th Circuit order to revive it with no public dissents. “The election is not merely upcoming; it has already started,” the Court wrote, warning that a switch “would usher in electoral chaos.” Trump responded that the Court “will just not let Missouri have an Election Victory.”
• Republican National Committee v. Eakin (U.S. Supreme Court)
  • The RNC and Pennsylvania’s Republican attorney general are asking the justices to let counties throw out mail ballots over a missing or wrong date on the envelope, after the 3rd Circuit ruled that doing so violates the Constitution and the Civil Rights Act. The petition has been pending since June, when the Court asked Trump’s Justice Department for its views; the justices begin sorting this term’s petitions at their long conference today.

In the States

Texas

• A glitch at the Department of Public Safety left at least 200,000 voter registrations unprocessed, some dating to last October, a week before the Oct. 5 registration deadline. Voters missing from the rolls because of the error can cast a provisional ballot that counts once officials confirm they registered on time.

Georgia

• The RNC and Georgia Republican Party are pressing the State Election Board, which meets today, to make counties batch and shuffle paper ballots before scanning them, two weeks before early voting starts Oct. 13, a change that could slow the count.

Nevada

• Election officials said every one of the 185 voters Trump’s DHS flagged as noncitizens is a citizen, after DHS refused to share the names and birthdates needed to check its work. “You have provided nothing of substance to suggest otherwise,” Nevada’s chief deputy secretary of state wrote.

Ohio

• Two Trump-appointed judges on the 6th Circuit last Wednesday reinstated a Republican law requiring documentary proof of citizenship from people who register to vote at the BMV, a rule that had already turned away women whose papers didn’t match their married names.

North Carolina

• Voting groups sued last Tuesday to block the election board’s last-minute mail-ballot rules, which reject ballots with unsealed inner envelopes and limit who can help return them, warning of “arbitrary disenfranchisement.” A board member estimated 3% of ballots could be tossed, and more than 81,000 have already been requested.

California

• The state Supreme Court ordered Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco to return roughly 650,000 ballots he seized from last year’s redistricting election, ruling Thursday that the seizure broke state law.

Delaware

• The state Supreme Court last Monday unanimously upheld permanent absentee voting, rejecting a Republican state senator’s bid to take automatic mail ballots away from the veterans, seniors and voters with disabilities who rely on them.

Upcoming Elections & Deadlines

Sunday, October 4

• Last day every eligible citizen can register by any method

Monday, October 5

• Registration deadline in Texas, Ohio, Arkansas, Louisiana and eight other states
• Supreme Court’s new term opens