Feds come for Monterey County Elections, and the County claps back.

I had planned to write this column, in the Weekly’s final issue before the Nov. 3 election, focused on a little finger-wagging for people who do not vote. Low participation is the real problem – not enough people return a ballot, choosing not to exercise this wildly empowering American right. In the June primary, 38.5 percent of registered voters in Monterey County voted. In the 2022 midterms, 49.3 percent voted. (Some of these nonvoters include candidates for local office who are now seeking your vote, according to public records provided by the Monterey County Elections Department.)

Turnout was better in the highly consequential 2024 presidential election, but still just 69.3 percent of voters in Monterey County returned their ballots. That was the election that brought President Donald Trump and his administration’s sledgehammer aimed at so many American institutions to power.

And now, that administration is coming for Monterey County voters claiming a different problem – that there are too many people registered to vote, alleging 310 people out of 220,213 registered voters, or 0.1 percent, are “likely aliens.”

In an Oct. 23 letter to Monterey County Registrar of Voters Gina Martinez, U.S. Attorney Craig H. Missakian starts out with seemingly innocuous language: “I write to seek your help to protect the integrity of the ongoing federal election.”

That would seem straightforward. But it quickly becomes more threatening.

“Within 48 hours, we ask that you commit to working with [the Department of Justice] and [Department of Homeland Security] to identify who on the accompanying list is a citizen and who is not.” By “working with,” Missakian goes on to explain, he means providing confidential information such as Social Security numbers.

“The legal consequences for either facilitating or ignoring federal crimes are significant,” Missakian goes on. “If persons knowingly tabulate ballots cast by individuals identified by federal agents as noncitizens, they risk becoming aiders and abettors to a federal crime.”

It’s clearly a letter meant to intimidate local election officials, and potential voters. And it’s based on a dubious argument. Missakian attached a legal argument pointing to “third-party commercial data” as the underlying source, and his letter arrived just two days after a federal court ruled that the federal government cannot conduct certain election-related activity in California in part because of its “reliance on admittedly flawed and incomplete data.”

Martinez and team did a quick review of the 310 names attached and found that only 142 are registered voters anyway.

“The requested action would be unlawful and a breach of voters’ trust of the highest order,” County Counsel Susan Blitch wrote in an Oct. 27 response. “The Registrar of Voters cannot and will not disclose the confidential information of hundreds of [Monterey] County residents… We consider DOJ’s efforts to threaten California election officials with criminal sanctions for following federal and state law to be an effort to unlawfully intimidate both election officials and California voters.”

I am glad to live in a county with leadership that is standing up for the rights of people to freely cast their votes, but even with an eventual court victory, damage is already being done. Trump is the face of a movement built in large part around sowing distrust in elections. It means candidates who don’t win can claim that they did, and the entire institution is destabilized.

It also means some citizens may, out of fear, decline to participate in this election if they are immigrants or have non-citizen family members and fear possible repercussions, all part of a grander strategy.

Meanwhile, Martinez and her team have been working to boost participation and turnout and encourage early voting. “Take it off your to-do list so if life does happen, you’ve already done your civic duty,” Martinez says.

(She recommends that if you do intend to mail in a ballot at this point that you bring it to a post office counter. Ballots postmarked by Nov. 3 and received by Nov. 10 will be counted.)

The elections team has been tabling to collect ballots around the county, in addition to the regular dropboxes. It appears to be working: As of Oct. 26, 40,573 ballots have already been returned, more than 18 percent of the registered voters.

Sara Rubin is the Weekly’s editor. Reach her at sara@montereycountynow.com.