Fourth court order this month tells Justice Department to stop threatening the people counting the votes.

…(cont) The pages are out of order. Hold on. Here.

October 17th, the Guardian prints a letter from senior Justice Department officials to election officials in California. Local officials who process and tabulate ballots submitted by suspected noncitizen voters, it says, are putting themselves at risk of criminal investigation and potential prosecution. The department's phrase for the offense is "knowingly tabulate." I circled it out there on the steps, because I couldn't work out who, in a room holding ten thousand envelopes, is the one who knows.

Five days later, October 22nd, a federal judge in California finds Homeland Security violated the Voting Rights Act, sending agents door to door asking people their immigration status and whether they had voted. Then the subpoenas: three employees of the Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder's office ordered into federal court on November 4th, which is the day after the election. Then October 26th, a $1 million reward announced for reporting voter fraud, past or upcoming. It is still sitting there. A million dollars offered for the thing, and the thing hasn't come in.

I want to show you a small thing. The fellow who runs the store on my corner took a run of bad twenties this summer. He taped a card by the register: fifty dollars to anybody who tells him who's passing them. Nobody has come in for the fifty. So last week he told the kid at the register that any bill that looks off goes in the second drawer, don't ring it, and if the kid takes a bad one it comes out of the kid's pay. I asked how the kid is supposed to tell. He said that's what the drawer is for. Tuesday the line was out the door, the dog and I were in it, and the kid rang everything. Was the kid passing bad money, or was the kid standing there?

Friday evening, Judge Trina Thompson, on a suit brought by unions representing California election workers, issues a temporary restraining order: the Justice Department is barred from threatening or coercing election workers to stop processing ballots, and barred from demanding that officials segregate or decline to count ballots the federal government deems may have been cast by ineligible voters. The order runs through November 16th.

That is four federal court orders in nineteen days against this administration's handling of Tuesday's election: October 12th, a New York judge halting taxpayer-funded television ads promoting the president and ordering the rest of a $20 million purchase cancelled; the 22nd, the Voting Rights Act ruling; the 28th, another judge freezing that same $20 million; Friday, the restraining order. And a report published the 27th found 53 of the 60 battleground House and Senate races sit in districts or states with at least one Trump-appointed judge on the bench.

Excuse me — you've got your hand on the door, this takes a second. The counting is Tuesday the 3rd. The three subpoenaed workers are in court Wednesday the 4th. The protection ends the 16th, and the letter is still the letter. So when a clerk picks up an envelope the government hasn't deemed anything about yet, and won't until afterward — I'm sorry to keep coming back to this, it's been in my teeth since the steps — which word in that letter is the one they'd be charged under, the department's own, knowingly?