The Vatican said Pope Leo exercised his right as a U.S. citizen, submitting a mail-in ballot in his native Chicago ahead of the midterm elections next week.
Page F131From§Eachthe afternoon edition — 30 October 2026
Justice Department offers $1 million for voter fraud tips; the pope's mail ballot isn't among them.
As it ran on the front
I keep the running file on who gets investigated for this election and who doesn't, and this week it needed a new tab.
Start on September 10th, when the First Circuit Court of Appeals called the president's mail-in voting executive order "likely unlawful," leaving it dead before a single midterm ballot could be cast. On October 15th, Texas got sued after a computer failure stranded nearly 600,000 voter registrations days before early voting opened — the state's own system, not a foreign hand, produced that backlog. On October 26th the president posted that anybody who reports voter fraud, past or upcoming, gets $1 million, paid out on arrest and conviction, with no cases named yet to collect it on. The same Monday, a federal appeals court declined to let the Justice Department set aside 20,000 mail ballots in California that officials called noncitizen votes, and the department opened the identical inquiry in Washington state before the ruling's ink dried.…
…(cont) Six wire services carried it by Friday morning — Fox, CBS, Le Monde, ABC, the Washington Examiner, the New York Post — each one noting the same fact: no sitting pope had voted in a U.S. election before. None of the six mentioned a subpoena. None mentioned the $1 million reward, or an inquiry, or a request for his registration file. The ballot traveled from a city-state with no voter rolls of its own, filled out by a head of state with diplomatic immunity, and as of Friday it carries a subpoena count of zero, a lawsuit count of zero, and a reward-claim count of zero.
Twenty thousand names in California drew a federal lawsuit and, within the week, a grand jury. A single ballot from Vatican City drew six headlines and a wire photo. Hon, that's not a loophole. That's the whole ledger, open on the counter, for anyone who wants to read which address gets you scrutiny and which one gets you a souvenir story.
“They put a million-dollar bounty on voter fraud and a grand jury on county clerks, and the one mail ballot that actually crossed an international border sails through without a phone call. That's not an oversight — that's who the dragnet was built to catch, and it was never going to be a guy in a white robe in Rome. Follow the subpoenas and you'll find they stop exactly where the power does.”
“Look, the Justice Department is simply following the data on noncitizen registration — nothing political about a grand jury the day after a judge asked how they picked their suspects, that's just diligence. And sure, a ballot that physically crossed an ocean from a sovereign city-state technically clears every box they're worried about everywhere else, but he's an American citizen, so that's fine, that's totally fine. Did I just argue the Vatican's rolls are cleaner than Fresno County's? That doesn't sound like me.”
Earlier in this story
- Justice Department charges Comey a third time, days after a judge ruled it illegally fired his daughter. By Lou · the afternoon edition, 30 October 2026
- Judge asks how suspects were found; Justice Department answers with subpoenas, a $1 million bounty, and friendly judges. By Lou · the afternoon edition, 30 October 2026
- Asked how it identified suspects, Justice Department responds with criminal subpoenas instead of an answer. By Lou · the morning edition, 30 October 2026
- Justice Department's voter list, rejected in three courts, promoted to grand jury subpoenas five days before the election. By Lou · the evening edition, 29 October 2026
- Group called the Department of Peace publishes names of 10,000 ICE and Border Patrol agents By Mitch · the evening edition, 29 October 2026
- Justice Department calls ballot counting disenfranchisement, loses its bid to stop the count six days before the vote. By Lou · the evening edition, 29 October 2026
The receipts
Pope Leo XIV has become the first pope to vote in a U.S. general election.
As a federal appeals court on Monday refused to order California officials to set aside 20,000 mail-in ballots that the Trump administration claimed were cast by noncitizens, the US Department of Justice was already pushing a similar effort in Washington state—the latest of what one advocate called "tired, desperate attempts by a…
The Catholic Church's first US-born pontiff submitted his mail-in ballot in Chicago. It is the first known time a pope has voted in a political election.
Pope Leo XIV may become the first-ever pope to vote in a secular election, let alone a U.S. one, as he ordered a mail-in ballot for the 2026 midterm elections. Kim Fladhammer, Will County clerk’s office chief of staff, told the Chicago Sun-Times that the leader of the Roman Catholic Church requested a mail-in ballot […]
Pope Leo XIV has become the first pope in history to vote in a U.S. general election
Pope Leo XIV requested a mail ballot from Vatican City to vote in Illinois' midterm elections, potentially the first pope to vote in a U.S. election.
· Trump issues $1m reward for reporting voter fraud in past or upcoming elections from the morgue, 26 Oct 2026
· Trump dangles $1m reward for reporting voter fraud in past or upcoming elections from the morgue, 26 Oct 2026
· Texas sued after glitch delays almost 600,000 voter registrations from the morgue, 15 Oct 2026
· Appeals Court Rejects 'Likely Unlawful' Trump Push to Undermine Mail-In Voting as Supreme Court Looms from the morgue, 10 Sep 2026
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front. The byline is a pen name for a column drafted by a machine and checked by the editor: how this is made.