DOJ threatens California clerks with prison over a noncitizen list missing the information needed to use it

…(cont) Then October 16th. The department didn't wait on the review. The same day, the Post ran a separate item on mail ballots reported stolen elsewhere in the state, number not yet determined, which is a sentence that will reappear.

October 17th is the long beat. The letter that made every paper — ABC, the Guardian, the Post, the Examiner — went to the same local officials, about the same ballots, with the same warning: knowingly tabulate a noncitizen's ballot, face prosecution. The president posted that the sentences would be long. All together now — the list underneath the letter. The same day, California's own officials told the Times what was actually on it: thousands of names "lacking key identifying information," and, separately, names paired with addresses that sat in jurisdictions the receiving official had no authority over.

That is the document the prosecution threat rests on. In September, the governor had already signed new felony penalties for law enforcement seizing ballots or election records near polling places — written for a different threat than a list with its fields half filled in, and now sitting one courtroom away from the clerks reading this one.

Georgia's own election board, meanwhile, asked this same Justice Department to come inspect its own voting machines. That request came with no letter about jail.