Commentary: California votes. Trump's Justice Department panics

This is read by an automated voice.Please report any issues or inconsistencies here.

See more from the L.A.Times in Google Search.

Set us as preferred My fellow Californians, let us begin with an intelligence test.Our great state has been voting since early October.

Folks have been mailing in their ballots, dropping them off at collection sites and even showing up at in-person centers.So raise your hand if you know — or even just assume — elections officials have been doing something with those ballots as they arrive, other than just throwing them in a pile.

Congratulations, hand-raisers.You are now officially smarter than the entire U.S.

Department of Justice.Or at least more honest.

On Sunday, the lawyers for the DOJ managed to get a three-judge panel of the Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit to convene a rare emergency hearing because, OMG, people are actually voting and California is processing ballots! Who could have possibly known? Even though it’s literally law that counties count ballots in a timely manner; even though it’s happened in every other election; even though the daily tallies of how many ballots are received are posted online by the secretary of State; even though there are live camera feeds of ballots being processed in Los Angeles — somehow the U.S.government didn’t know this normal election procedure was happening, it claimed.

Politics Two judges questioned the Justice Department’s lawyer about how the Trump administration’s position squared with the law.It wasn’t until late Friday, when DOJ lawyers read a filing by California DOJ lawyers laying out that L.A.is, like, actually opening mail-in ballots, that the U.S.

DOJ realized that ballots are being opened.About 600,000 so far in L.A.That seemed “absurd on its face,” argued California Deputy Solicitor Gen.

Samuel P.Siegel.

Armed with this previously unknowable information, Trump’s lawyers were begging the appeals court to take their flimsy, constitu...