Supreme Court spent twelve days barring student IDs while warning of voter confusion too close to an election, and answered the president's own midterm request in hours.

…(cont) September twenty-fifth: six to three, the Supreme Court lifted a lower court's order that had kept the Department of Homeland Security from using and expanding a database called SAVE — the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements — to screen state voter rolls while the case runs on appeal. The database was built to check whether noncitizens qualified for government benefits. Common Dreams reports it is known for flagging naturalized citizens, and that eligible voters may have their registrations wrongfully canceled weeks before the midterms. Fox's write-up of the same order says states may use the program, for now, in their efforts to verify the eligibility of voters on their rolls.

Verify. I underlined that, and then I underlined the figure sitting under it: the database cannot confirm four in ten of the names it matches belong to registered voters.

I keep a ring of ten keys in the glovebox. Six of them I can place — the house, the back door we rehung, the padlock on the garage, the toolbox, the chain on the side gate, my brother-in-law's shed. Four I cannot place at all. That is not modesty; I don't know what they open, and I've carried some of them eleven years. Now suppose a fellow comes up the driveway and tells me he has been through that ring and can tell me which houses on my street have the wrong people living behind the doors. Before I let him start, I'd want to ask him the question the paper already answers: out of ten names the screen matches, how many does it say it cannot confirm belong to registered voters?

Because on November first, two days before the polls closed, James Percival, general counsel at the Department of Homeland Security, vowed to find, charge and deport any noncitizen caught casting an illegal ballot in the midterms. That vow sits right on top of the four.

So I went looking for a second number, and I found Springfield. September fifth, at a roundtable in Cincinnati, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin announced that Immigration and Customs Enforcement had arrested 380 Haitian citizens in Springfield. One count, with the cameras there for it. How many counts has Washington published since? It isn't a trick question. Ask it and the answer is on the page: Washington has not issued a second number.

Then the other date, the one that actually got me up. October twenty-second, the Court let New Hampshire refuse student IDs at the polls, reversing a federal judge's order. Fox's write-up says the warning was of voter confusion too close to an election. The Washington Examiner's lead calls the thing New Hampshire wanted lifted a last-minute block, and the state's petition was an emergency one, filed by Secretary of State David Scanlan. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote a short dissent saying she would have left the lower court's decision in place.

Twelve days on the student card. Hours on the president's own midterm request. Those are their two numbers, not mine; I only copied them onto the same page, one under the other, which is how I ended up on the porch.

Excuse me — I see the coat's on, I'll be quick. One thing. Twelve days of thinking about a university card, and the stated worry was confusion too close to an election. Of the two applications in front of that same bench, which one came back in hours? Don't answer me, it's printed. Ask your clock.