In perhaps the most damning act of #Resistance yet, Gavin Newsom’s California is refusing to even check if a few thousand specific registered voters are in fact noncitizens.
Washington sent Sacramento a list of 20,000 suspected violations to check out; Newsom & Co. responded: Pound sand — so the feds are taking California to court.
Gov. Newsom and other Democrats are screaming that Trump is trying to rig the midterm elections, or maybe to set up another claim of “fraud” if he loses — but it sure looks like they fear what they might find if they look under the hood here.
It’d be easy for Sacramento to investigate: Just access the list of noncitizens the Justice Department sent over (in a password-protected thumb drive) and see if California, through county registrars, sent them ballots.
They could look, and prove the Trumpies are way off-base, or maybe find a few cases where mistakes were made — but surely not enough to impact any elections, right?
Right?
So why do California Democrats refuse?
Maybe Newsom simply figures he can get more cheap mileage from scaring voters about Trump . . . or maybe he’s scared of what he’d find.
The Trump administration has tried for years to get California to provide its voter rolls so the feds can help clean them up; Newsom keeps telling them to talk to the hand.
Hmm: Sacramento was insisting Cali had next to no welfare fraud before Team Trump started pointing to blatant evidence of robbery in the billions.
Yes, the Constitution’s clear: States run elections . . . but the Constitution also obliges the feds to protect civil rights and otherwise ensure proper execution of the laws.
The consequences of a faulty system go far beyond one state — as Newsom & Co. keep reminding us, the midterms are about the nation as a whole: That was his excuse for the recent, massive gerrymander.
So if a badly flawed California voting system helps hand the House to Democrats, we all must live with the consequences.
Is that why Newsom & Co. refuse to even check for flaws?