Justice Department Makes Thumb Drive Final Authority on Citizenship
The Justice Department unveiled its new “trust the thumb drive” election standard Wednesday, giving California 48 hours to prove that every voter named in a federal spreadsheet is a citizen or begin setting aside ballots as though they were yogurt of uncertain age. The password-protected drive delivered to Los Angeles County reportedly contains people the federal government suspects may be noncitizens, based on evidence officials declined to provide because revealing evidence could encourage the reckless habit of examining it. California Secretary of State Shirley Weber objected that the demand arrived without clear legal authority, supporting records or enough time to investigate, three procedural luxuries the administration classified as threats to election integrity.
President Donald Trump praised the reform as a technological triumph over documents that can be read by voters and challenged in court. “We have the best thumb drives, extremely official, and once your name goes onto one of these drives, frankly, the computer has spoken and citizenship is finished,” Trump said. Under the modernized system, eligibility will no longer depend primarily on passports, birth certificates, naturalization records or due process. Instead, citizenship will be determined by whether an unidentified federal employee placed a name in a spreadsheet, saved the file correctly and remembered which desk drawer contained the drive.
Weber said California already requires voters to be citizens and maintains procedures for removing ineligible registrants. California Attorney General Rob Bonta called the ultimatum another attempt to promote false claims of widespread noncitizen voting. Federal officials countered that verifying the government’s allegations would undermine public confidence by exposing whether the allegations were accurate. They also warned that asking how names entered the database could delay the department’s urgent work of treating the database as proof that the database was right.
The Justice Department threatened emergency litigation, demonstrating its confidence in orderly election administration by arriving shortly before voting with a flash drive, a deadline and an objection to follow-up questions. Courts may still review the demand, but the administration has already simplified the constitutional question: Americans are citizens until a Microsoft Excel file says otherwise, and the thumb drive is now the nation’s highest form of citizenship documentation.
* None of the quotes in this article were spoken by an actual person. More info.