Why Trump’s dubious election lawsuits in Alaska and California should raise eyebrows

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President Donald Trump’s Justice Department has gone to great lengths to bulldoze the ethical line between enforcing the law and serving as the legal wing of Trump’s political operation .

The latest episodes: A pair of extraordinary lawsuits in which the DOJ seeks to intervene in the vote-counting process in two states: Alaska and California.

Both lawsuits appear very unlikely to bear fruit; indeed, experts say they basically amount to legal Hail Marys.

But there’s a bigger takeaway. They signal a very notable willingness by Trump’s DOJ to engage in highly questionable behavior to try and put its thumb on the electoral scale for Trump and his fellow Republicans. And the president isn’t even trying to be subtle about his role here — asked about his take on the Alaska lawsuit Friday afternoon, he replied: “I’m the one that said do it.”

In that case, Trump’s DOJ is seeking to block the certification of that state’s Senate race if GOP Sen. Dan Sullivan loses by a small enough margin that it’s possible that another candidate with a similar name, Daniel J. Sullivan , won enough confused voters to cost the senator victory. Alaska is a critical state for Democrats’ hopes of flipping control of the Senate.

In California last week, Trump’s DOJ sought to block state officials from counting the ballots of around 20,000 people that the administration has claimed could be noncitizens.

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There are major and readily apparent legal problems with both of these lawsuits.

The Alaska filing claims that certifying Democrat Mary Peltola as the winner without examining whether voter confusion cost Sen. Sullivan the race would violate Alaska’s duties under the National Voter Registration Act to “protect the integrity of the electoral process.”

But Notre Dame Law School Professor Derek Muller wrote on the Election Law Blog on Friday that the law doesn’t actually place any such “duties” on a state .

Rick Hasen, a law professor at UCLA, told CNN: “I would give the complaint in this case a failing grade if it were written by one of my students. It’s an embarrassment to the Department of Justice and is extremely unlikely to succeed.”

The California lawsuit is seen as a similar longshot. The administration argues it can challenge how California has handled purported noncitizen voting because of the Constitution’s Supremacy Clause, which states that federal law prevails when it conflicts with state law. But Muller and Hasen noted there is no federal law regarding how states should verify citizenship.

Beyond that, there are other eyebrow-raising problems.

In Alaska, it is very unlikely that Daniel J. Sullivan would ever actually matter due to the state’s ranked-choice voting, meaning anybody who is confused could rank both Dan Sullivans, and their vote will in all likelihood be counted for the senator. Also, the senator, unlike Daniel J. Sullivan, is listed on the ballot as an “incumbent” and a Republican.

It’s also not at all clear how an investigation would ever ascertain how many votes Sen. Sullivan lost due to voter confusion.

This issue has already been litigated extensively in court, and the Alaska Supreme Court ruled in June that the Daniel J. Sullivan was qualified for the ballot.

So this looks like an effort to inject doubt if Peltola wins, as much as anything.

And then there’s Trump outright saying he directed his DOJ to file the lawsuit, which carries obvious implications for him politically. That’s not surprising at this point — he’s clearly played a role in getting DOJ to prosecute his political foes, for example — but it’s still highly problematic.

(And no, we never saw anything like it with Joe Biden’s DOJ .)

As for the California lawsuit, Attorney General Todd Blanche objected Thursday when asked whether the government was inflicting chaos on the election with its late move.

“It continues to baffle me why anybody … if presented with evidence that there are tens of thousands, 20,000 ineligible voters that are receiving ballots — that there isn’t some motivation, anything to do something about that,” Blanche said.

The problem is that the administration has been crying wolf about noncitizen voting for a very long time. It has regularly claimed numbers that utterly fell apart under scrutiny .

It claimed there were as many as 16,000 noncitizens on the voter rolls in Nevada, for example. It later sharply pared that number back to 185. But when Nevada probed the cases, it found all 185 were citizens .

A federal judge this week cited that flawed data while halting portions of the Department of Homeland Security’s investigation of purported noncitizen voting in a series of states, including California.

The judge cited how the efforts could ultimately mostly amount to “ interference or intimidation .”

And that’s really the point here. It’s one thing to file lawsuits that target legitimate issues; it’s another to file longshot efforts for political purposes or even just to apply pressure.

The 2020 election showed that lawsuits don’t need to succeed to have an impact. Trump’s many wild and false claims of mass voter fraud whipped his supporters into a frenzy, with many hundreds of them later attacking the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, when legal avenues failed.

Even absent threats of a violent uprising, these kinds of legal efforts could deliver a pretext for other extraordinary action related to the election — which Trump has repeatedly left on the table .

What happens if the courts won’t step up to (supposedly) prevent Democrats from cheating to win the Alaska Senate race? What happens if they won’t assist the federal government’s efforts to prevent (supposed) illegal votes in California?

Think about the things a president could justify.

Blanche was asked Thursday whether the Justice Department would ever get involved in the certification process or try to block states from certifying their elections. He declined to rule it out but suggested it would only be in a “doomsday scenario.”

Shortly thereafter, we found out the DOJ is indeed moving to block a state from certifying its election — at least conditionally — because Trump told it to.

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唐纳德·特朗普总统的司法部不遗余力地模糊执法与充当特朗普政治运作的法律部门之间的道德界限。

最新进展：司法部试图干预阿拉斯加州和加利福尼亚州两个州的计票过程，这是两起非同寻常的诉讼。

这两起诉讼似乎都不太可能取得成果；事实上，专家表示，它们基本上相当于法律上的孤注一掷。

但还有更重要的意义。这些事件表明，特朗普的司法部非常愿意采取一些极具争议的行为，试图为特朗普及其共和党同僚在选举中施加影响。而总统本人也毫不掩饰自己的角色——周五下午，当被问及对阿拉斯加诉讼案的看法时，他回答说：“是我下令这么做的。”

在这种情况下，如果共和党参议员丹·沙利文的败选差距足够小，以至于另一位名字相似的候选人丹尼尔·J·沙利文赢得了足够多的选民，导致沙利文落败，那么特朗普的司法部将试图阻止该州参议员选举结果的认证。阿拉斯加州对于民主党能否夺回参议院的控制权至关重要。

上周在加利福尼亚州，特朗普的司法部试图阻止州官员统计大约 2 万张选票，特朗普政府声称这些选票可能来自非公民。

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这两起诉讼都存在重大且显而易见的法律问题。

阿拉斯加州提交的文件声称，在没有调查选民困惑是否导致参议员苏利文落败的情况下，就确认民主党人玛丽·佩尔托拉获胜，将违反阿拉斯加州根据《国家选民登记法》所承担的“保护选举过程的公正性”的义务。

但圣母大学法学院教授德里克·穆勒周五在选举法博客上撰文指出，该法律实际上并没有对州施加任何此类“义务”。

加州大学洛杉矶分校法学教授里克·哈森告诉CNN：“如果这份诉状是由我的学生写的，我会给它不及格。这对司法部来说是一种耻辱，而且极不可能成功。”

加州的诉讼也被认为胜算渺茫。政府辩称，根据宪法最高条款，当联邦法律与州法律相冲突时，联邦法律优先适用，因此可以对加州处理所谓“非公民投票”的方式提出质疑。但穆勒和哈森指出，目前尚无联邦法律规定各州应如何核实公民身份。

除此之外，还有其他一些令人匪夷所思的问题。

在阿拉斯加，由于该州采用排序复选制投票，丹尼尔·J·沙利文的选票几乎不会产生任何实际影响。这意味着任何感到困惑的选民都可能将两位丹·沙利文都列入投票名单，而他们的选票很可能最终会投给那位参议员。此外，与丹尼尔·J·沙利文不同，这位参议员在选票上被列为“现任”且是共和党人。

目前还完全不清楚调查将如何确定苏利文参议员因选民困惑而损失了多少选票。

这个问题已经在法庭上进行了广泛的诉讼，阿拉斯加州最高法院在 6 月份裁定丹尼尔·J·沙利文有资格参加投票。

所以，这看起来更像是为了在佩尔托拉获胜时制造疑虑而采取的行动。

此外，特朗普还公开表示，是他指示司法部提起诉讼的，这显然对他的政治前途产生了影响。考虑到这一点，这并不令人意外——例如，他显然曾参与推动司法部起诉他的政治对手——但这仍然非常成问题。

（而且，我们从未在乔·拜登领导下的司法部看到过类似的事情。）

至于加州的诉讼，当被问及政府的这一迟来举措是否会给选举带来混乱时，加州总检察长托德·布兰奇周四表示反对。

“我始终无法理解，为什么有人……如果拿出证据证明有成千上万、两万名不符合资格的选民收到了选票——却没有任何动力、没有任何行动来解决这个问题，”布兰奇说道。

问题在于，本届政府长期以来一直在大肆渲染非公民投票的问题。它经常公布一些数据，但这些数据在仔细审查下都彻底站不住脚。

例如，该机构声称内华达州选民名册上有多达16000名非公民。后来，该机构将这一数字大幅削减至185人。但内华达州调查这些案件后发现，这185人全部都是公民。

本周，一名联邦法官援引了这些有缺陷的数据，叫停了国土安全部对包括加利福尼亚州在内的一系列州所谓的非公民投票行为的部分调查。

法官指出，这些努力最终可能大多构成“干涉或恐吓”。

而这才是问题的关键所在。针对合法问题提起诉讼是一回事；出于政治目的，甚至仅仅为了施加压力而提起胜算渺茫的诉讼则是另一回事。

2020年的选举表明，诉讼不一定要成功才能产生影响。特朗普关于大规模选民舞弊的诸多荒谬且虚假的指控煽动了他的支持者，在法律途径失效后，数百名支持者于2021年1月6日袭击了美国国会大厦。

即使没有暴力起义的威胁，这类法律努力也可能为与选举相关的其他非常规行动提供借口——而特朗普一再将此类行动搁置一边。

如果法院不采取行动（据称）阻止民主党人在阿拉斯加州参议员选举中作弊，会发生什么？如果法院不协助联邦政府阻止加利福尼亚州（据称）非法选票，会发生什么？

想想总统会为哪些事情辩护。

周四，有人问布兰奇，司法部是否会介入认证程序或试图阻止各州认证选举结果。他没有排除这种可能性，但暗示这只会发生在“世界末日”般的极端情况下。

不久之后，我们发现司法部确实正在采取行动，阻止某个州认证其选举结果——至少是有条件地阻止——因为特朗普指示他们这样做。