Justice & Legal

Justice Department calls ballot counting disenfranchisement, loses its bid to stop the count six days before the vote.

By LouOne More Question · the evening edition, 29 October 2026

My nephew is in his second year of law school, and I take him very seriously, because somebody in this family has to know what a motion is. I called him Wednesday night, after I read that a federal judge in California turned down the Justice Department's request to set aside twenty thousand mail ballots, and I asked him a simple question: if a court says no in the morning, can you take the same ask to a different court by afternoon and call it a new argument?

He said that's not quite what happened. He said what happened is this: the department asked a trial judge to stop the count. The trial judge said no. The department then asked an appeals court, the same day, to say the trial judge was wrong. The appeals court said no too. Same day. I wrote that down — "same day" — because I wanted to be sure I had it right, and I checked it twice.

Is that normal, I asked him. He said normal isn't the word he'd use. He said what's unusual is the pattern — the Supreme Court, back in September, on a different mail-ballot request from this same administration, also said no. The trial court, Wednesday, said no. The appeals court, Wednesday, said no. Three courts. One argument. Does an argument get stronger with use, or does it just get older?

I went out to the garage after that, because the car's been doing a thing where it turns over twice before it catches, and I got to thinking about a word in the department's own filing. The word was "emergency." A lawyer for the department wrote that the delay "disenfranchises American citizens through dilution." I had to read that one twice myself. The ballots in question were cast weeks ago. The letters demanding counties set them aside went out on the 24th. The lawsuit was filed on the 15th. The thumb drive — there was a thumb drive, with a handwritten password taped to it — went to Los Angeles County two days before that. Does two weeks of filings count as urgent, or is that just how long it takes to lose in front of three different courts?

My nephew didn't have an answer for that one. He said that's not a law school question, that's a dictionary question. Fair enough.

What I keep turning over isn't even the two weeks. It's that losing didn't end it. The trial judge said no Wednesday morning. The appeals court said no Wednesday afternoon. By Wednesday evening the department had filed notice that it's appealing again — not reconsidering, not withdrawing, appealing — the same request, headed somewhere else. Six days before an election it would decide, if it worked. Does an argument that's failed at three levels of court get a fourth hearing because the calendar is short, or because the calendar is the point?

I was going to leave it there. But — excuse me, before you go — one more thing, because it's bothering me and I'd be lying if I said it wasn't. The department's own filing said the delay "disenfranchises American citizens." Twenty thousand people, whose ballots a trial judge and an appeals court both said can be counted like anyone else's, are the ones the department says are being disenfranchised — by the ruling that lets their ballots be counted, not by the request that tried to stop it. I don't like to come back to one word twice in a column, and I'm sorry to do it again, but what do you call it when the word for stopping the count and the word for losing the fight to stop it turn out to be the same word — emergency?

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THE INVESTIGATIONS

Governor opens criminal probe into the one Alaska candidate whose win a federal suit seeks to void

By SterlingThe Ownership Desk · the morning edition, 29 October 2026

Three instruments in seven days, and every one of them points the same way. On 23 October the Department of Justice went into federal court to stop Alaska certifying its Senate result — if the Republican incumbent does not win. Only then. A condition precedent, you see, and the condition is a Republican defeat. Senator Tillis said on Sunday that the outcome was "appropriate to take a look at." On Wednesday Senator Scott asked that same Department to investigate Mary Peltola's campaign. On Thursday Governor Dunleavy directed the Department of Public Safety to determine "whether this scheme violated Alaska's laws and whether criminal charges or civil action are warranted." Two men named Dan Sullivan sit on that ballot, one of them the sitting senator, and the count every one of these documents concerns has not happened ... nor has a single page of it been turned the other way. Peltola denied the allegations. The Washington Examiner had the whole affair on 31 August, before anything was filed anywhere. Alaska votes Tuesday. Six days.

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Trump carried South Carolina by 18 points; Fox News rated the seat a toss-up with a week left.

By MortThe Records Bureau · the morning edition, 29 October 2026

South Carolina's safe Republican Senate seat died this week, at the hands of the people paid to take its pulse. It was twenty-eight years old.

It was born in 1998, the last year the state elected a Democrat to the Senate, and it had an easy life after that. Donald Trump carried South Carolina by nearly eighteen points in 2024. The seat belonged to Lindsey Graham, and it is held now by his sister, Darline Graham, with the president's endorsement. For years nobody wrote anything about it, because there was nothing to write.

The decline shows up in the paperwork on September 23, when the Cook Political Report shifted South Carolina toward the Democrats — the same notice that moved Kansas from "likely Republican" to "lean Republican." On October 6, Sabato's Crystal Ball shifted South Carolina toward the Democrats too, in the bulletin that moved Alaska from "toss-up" to "leans Democrat." On October 20, Cook moved South Carolina left a second time. That was the same notice in which Cook moved Minnesota toward the Republicans, which disposes of the comfortable idea that the forecasters had simply gotten sweet on one party.

Then the living came forward. On October 26, two former governors of the state, David Beasley, a Republican, and Jim Hodges, a Democrat, appeared in a video for Annie Andrews, the Democrat and a pediatrician running for the seat. In it they allow that the two of them "haven't always agreed on everything." They agreed on one thing this week, and it was not the Republican on the ballot.

On Tuesday, Fox News moved its own rating from "leans Republican" to "toss-up," seven days before the ballots are counted, citing polling that had Graham at 48 percent. By Thursday a New York Times/Siena poll had the two candidates tied there, 48 to 48, in one of the most Republican states in the country. And on Thursday afternoon the president lands in Rock Hill to make his final pitch of the midterms, in a state he won by eighteen, six days before the vote.

The handicappers do not know shit about next Tuesday. They know what they counted in September and October, and they counted it four times, each time in the same direction, and one of those counts was taken by the house organ.

The seat is preceded in death by its "leans Republican" rating and by the eighteen-point margin. It is survived by an endorsement video, four downgrades, a dead-even poll, and an airplane.

In lieu of flowers, the family asks that you vote on Tuesday, November 3, in the state where you are registered, whether or not anyone has flown in to ask you.

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ZERO BALLOTS

Sullivan tells Alaskans to mark Decoy Dan, the candidate at the center of Thursday's grand jury subpoenas.

By SterlingThe Ownership Desk · the evening edition, 29 October 2026

You will have read that the Justice Department prepares dozens of fresh grand jury subpoenas on Thursday, and you will have taken that for a development. Take it again. On 23 October that same Department asked a federal court to block certification of Alaska's Senate result — if the Republican incumbent loses. Only then. Senator Tillis found the outcome "appropriate to take a look at" on Sunday the 25th. By Thursday Chairman Comer had an Oversight investigation open and Governor Dunleavy was on television worrying aloud about a "cover-up". Four instruments in six days, and not a ballot among them. And Senator Sullivan, whose seat this grubby apparatus guards — what does he ask of Alaskans? That they decline to rank Mary Peltola, and fill in the bubble for the retired teacher whom a progressive super PAC was funding as of 19 October. Do mind what that instruction does. A ranked ballot with no surviving choice left on it is exhausted: set aside, unread, in the round that decides. He is not asking them for a vote. He is asking them for ... a bubble they do not get back. Peltola calls the report a "distraction". CBS News staff met it with "significant resistance". Tuesday counts what is left.

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Justice Department's voter list, rejected in three courts, promoted to grand jury subpoenas five days before the election.

By LouOne More Question · the evening edition, 29 October 2026

I asked a question last week and somebody answered it and I was satisfied, which with me is usually the first sign of trouble. The question was: when a court tells the lawyers no, what do the lawyers do next? The answer I got was, you appeal. I wrote it down — hold on, it's in the notebook, I've got the dog's shot record in the same pocket, she's overdue — here it is. "You appeal." So Wednesday I asked it again, and the answer came out a different shape. Wednesday the answer was, you subpoena.

Let me come at it from the other side, and I apologize for circling. Wednesday a federal judge in California turned down the Justice Department's request to set aside twenty thousand mail ballots the department says were likely cast by noncitizens. That's the ruling Truthout put under the headline "Our Democracy Is in Danger." Then, before that order was a day old, the New York Times reported the department had issued grand jury subpoenas to local election officials in the state, part of what the Times calls a widening effort to prove unsubstantiated claims about large numbers of illegal voters. The no came first. The subpoenas came after. Does the order of those two things change what the second one is?

Up in Washington State they got a version of the same ask. The department wanted Secretary of State Steve Hobbs to tell his election officials to set aside ballots for hundreds of people the federal government had identified as alleged noncitizens. Hobbs wrote back Wednesday — I've got his words here, give me a second — "Without individualized proof of ineligibility," he said, it would not be done, and he called the request "profoundly disappointing." His office went through the list and found several errors in it. That's his word, disappointing, not mine. The errors are the part I keep wanting to ask about.

There's a store on my corner, Marty's, and Marty keeps a list taped by the register, names of people whose checks came back on him. Short list, Marty's handwriting. Say I come in for cigars and my name's on it, spelled a little wrong, because Marty writes about the way Marty drives. Now, does Marty hand my check back because the list says so, or does he look at the check? I've always figured he looks at the check. He'd say, Lou, you're on here, let's find out how you got on here. What he wouldn't do is keep the list and start asking the stock boy questions under oath.

I should have been asking this in September. In September a whistleblower report said Homeland Security employees were told to pose as voters while searching state voter rolls, and that the searches likely violated state law and could wrongly flag citizens. On October 9 a federal judge ruled the department's policy of collecting unredacted state voter rolls to run them against a federal immigration database was unlawful — seventy-eight pages, privacy laws. On October 22 another federal judge found Homeland Security violated the Voting Rights Act by sending agents door to door asking people about their immigration status and whether they had voted. Three rulings. One list. If the list is the thing the courts keep sending back, what are the subpoenas collecting?

Former department officials told CBS this week that moves like these, this close to a vote, are uncharted waters — their phrase — and that they could influence politics. Forty years of neutrality, and the people who used to work there are the ones saying it on the record.

Oh — excuse me, before you go, I left my raincoat on your chair anyway. There's an election lawyer on Fox, J. Christian Adams, saying the SAVE database could clean these rolls up and that California and Washington still refuse to use it for verification. I believe him that they refuse. I just can't get the two pages to lie flat next to each other, because the October 9 ruling says running state voter rolls against that federal immigration database is the thing a judge called unlawful. So when the states say no to the database, are they refusing an offer, or are they obeying an order? Whichever it is, the subpoenas went out five days before the election, and the list still has the errors in it.

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Trump's third rally in a state he carried by 18 points opened on culture war, not the economy.

By MortThe Records Bureau · the evening edition, 29 October 2026

South Carolina's safe Republican Senate seat died this week at the hands of its own pollsters, and was eulogized Thursday afternoon in Rock Hill, where the subject at the microphone was not money.

It was twenty-eight. It was born in 1998, the last year the state sent a Democrat to the Senate, and it had an easy life after that. Donald Trump carried South Carolina by nearly eighteen points in 2024. The seat was Lindsey Graham's; his sister, Darline Graham, holds it now, with the president's endorsement. For years nobody wrote anything about it, because there was nothing to write.

The decline is in the paperwork. On September 23 the Cook Political Report shifted South Carolina toward the Democrats, the same notice that moved Kansas. On October 20 Cook moved the race again. On October 26 two Republican former governors of the state endorsed the Democrat, Dr. Annie Andrews. Then Fox News' own power rankings called the seat a toss-up, which is the sort of thing a family hears from the second opinion.

The president came three times. The third and final visit was Thursday, in Rock Hill, and The Hill counted a barrage of culture-war attacks on Dr. Andrews; Graham, the president said, is "running to save you from a radical left." A closing argument is the best thing a campaign has left. This one did not open on groceries, or rent, or what a hospital visit costs here.

The turn had shown up on October 5, as the race tightened, when the president began calling Dr. Andrews by a penny-ante nickname built out of a slur, posted it several times, and invoked Graham's late brother in the same breath.

The healthcare argument, such as it was, had been made back on August 26, when Graham attacked her opponent's support for what she called government-run healthcare and then told the story of her parents' early deaths. Observers could not agree on what the point was. The woman she is running against is a pediatrician.

So the economy was available. It is always available. It did not come up, and anybody who has worked a shift sick in this state knows that is not an oversight. It is a subject change, and the subject it changed away from is the shit people carry to the mailbox on the first of the month.

The seat is survived by a toss-up rating, two former governors, and eighteen points of 2024 margin that now sit in the archive like a folded flag. It was preceded in death by the notion that a late-October rally is a victory lap.

In lieu of flowers, the family asks that you vote on November 3, and that before you do you make somebody answer the question the last rally skipped: what a sick child costs in South Carolina, and who pays it.

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LAST RALLY

President cancels two rallies, upgrades to a 19-state phone sprint, warns voters Democratic wins mean less federal help.

By MortThe Records Bureau · the morning edition, 30 October 2026

The retail campaign rally died this week in nineteen states at once, survived by a conference-call format and a plainly stated threat of withheld federal aid.

By Thursday the format had nothing left to open with anywhere. ABC News and RTÉ each reported the same fact: the president canceled his last two in-person rallies, in Iowa and Kansas. The Republican National Committee did not call this a retreat; it called the replacement a seventy-two-hour sprint — tele-rallies across nineteen states, the president's voice carried by phone line into rooms his motorcade will not reach before Tuesday, voters who, the committee said, "want to hear from President Trump before Election Day."

What they will hear, ABC News reported the same day, is a price. The president has been signaling to the same states that federal help will be "far less likely" if their voters elect Democrats. The rally died; the ask survived it, cheaper to produce and harder to walk back, because nobody can clip a phone call into a thirty-second attack ad.

The threat did not arrive alone. On Monday the president offered a $1 million reward, paid on arrest and conviction, for reports of voter fraud in this election and past ones. On Tuesday the advocacy group Demand Justice found that 53 of 60 battleground House and Senate races sit in districts or states with at least one Trump-appointed, election-denying judge on the bench. In August the Supreme Court had cleared ground for the fight, lifting an injunction on the president's mail-in-voting order 6 to 3. And in Texas, campaigning for other Republicans, the president touted the oil prices he once predicted a war with Iran would bring — "I knew that oil would go up" — while on a nearby tarmac, before his own flight to Michigan, the vice president was asked about the president calling that state's Democratic Senate candidate a "jihadist" and responded to the question.

None of this is bunk; all of it is dated, filed, and on the record before the polls open. The retail rally is survived by a phone line, a bounty, and a bench. It was preceded in death by the economy, as a thing a campaign was still willing to run on. In lieu of flowers, count the days left, and vote anyway.

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ZERO BALLOTS

Alaska's four-agency probe into a same-name candidate has produced zero charges, one on-air clarification: not illegal.

By MitchInvestigations · the morning edition, 30 October 2026

You will want the order of operations, so here it is, clause by clause, all together now.

On 23 October the Justice Department asked a federal court to block certification of Alaska's Senate result — but only if Senator Dan Sullivan, the Republican incumbent, loses. Read the conditional again. The lawsuit does not ask a court to guard an election. It asks a court to guard a seat.

By 29 October the Department followed its own filing with a new wave of subpoenas, CBS News reported, the latest step in what it called an "ongoing criminal investigation." No indictment has attached itself to that word yet.

Follow the document: still no ballot in dispute.

The one Oversight Committee Democrat quoted on the record, Rep. Robert Garcia, reaffirmed his support for Senate candidate Mary Peltola. He acknowledged, The Hill reported, that the state should investigate, and he deferred the next steps to Alaska.

Fox News spent Thursday recirculating an old Peltola quote, resurfaced to demand that someone "turn yourself in." That instruction remains unfilled.

Then came the document that actually answers the question the week's reporting had been circling. All together now: the CBS headline is phrased as a question — "Is it legal to recruit a candidate with the same name as one's opponent?" — and CBS's own legal analyst, Jessica Levinson, went on air and answered it.

So here is the filing cabinet, fully assembled: a conditional lawsuit, a new wave of subpoenas, a House committee, a state inquiry, a recycled quote demanding a confession, and a legal analyst explaining that none was owed. Zero ballots. Zero charges. One government, working very hard to investigate a thing its own television coverage just told you is legal.

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