Fears of election day interference fizzle, but federal war on voter fraud could continue

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Set us as preferred Federal immigration agents didn’t swarm polling locations.FBI agents didn’t storm processing centers or seize ballots.

A thousand federal election monitors caused little fuss.And President Trump — the nation’s election denier in chief — responded to a shellacking for his Republican Party by saying he’d work with Democrats as they take power in Congress in January.In many ways, the unprecedented fear and months of warnings from top officials in California that the Trump administration would seek to disrupt Tuesday’s midterm elections fizzled.

But that does not mean an end to the administration’s war on alleged voter fraud by noncitizens — a cornerstone of its election interference efforts in California, and one that has threatened criminal sanctions not just against individuals who illegally cast ballots, but local elections officials who counted such votes.Since the weekend, California elections officials in the Bay Area — in both Sonoma and Santa Clara counties — received the latest criminal subpoenas from federal prosecutors demanding information about alleged noncitizen voters, but also internal records related to how they had reacted to earlier Justice Department requests that they set aside ballots from potential noncitizens.Los Angeles County elections officials had previously received such subpoenas.Even as ballots were being cast Tuesday, the Trump administration was fighting in federal court for the right to demand that California set aside 20,000 ballots from voters whose citizenship it questions, and to threaten election officials and workers with criminal prosecution if they refuse.And the U.S.

9th Circuit Court of Appeals delivered it a win late Monday and early Tuesday, lifting a lower court order that had barred such actions.A separate court — backed by another 9th C...