司法部起诉要求阻止阿拉斯加州参议院选举结果（如果共和党现任参议员丹·沙利文落败），这在法律上极大概率是不成立的。
The Justice Department’s lawsuit to block Alaska’s Senate election results if Republican incumbent Dan Sullivan loses is likely a legal nonstarter.
“该诉讼意图滥用，论点近乎荒谬，应当在实体上败诉，”卡托研究所的沃尔特·奥尔森表示。
“This lawsuit is abusive in intent and nearly frivolous in argument, and should fail on the merits,” CATO Institute’s Walter Olson said.
这是特朗普政府为强行接管州选举程序、警告拒绝配合政府要求的地方选举官员将面临后果、以及为预计将对唐纳德·特朗普总统及其共和党盟友不利的中期选举周期蒙上非法性阴影，而进行的最新一轮零散尝试。
It’s the latest effort in a scattershot bid by the Trump administration to commandeer state election procedures, warn of consequences for local election officials who refuse the administration’s entreaties and cast a specter of illegitimacy over a midterm cycle expected to be punishing for President Donald Trump and his GOP allies.
在为特朗普的选举舞弊主张提供法律支持的努力中，政府鲜有胜算。但司法部在选举周期最后、高压锅般的几周里采取的激进举措，凸显了该部门在其前刑事辩护律师、司法部长托德·布兰奇的掌舵下，是如何将自己塑造成特朗普形象的。
The administration has had few victories in its legal effort to back up Trump’s claims of election fraud. But the Justice Department’s aggressive moves in the final, pressure-cooker weeks of the election cycle underscore the way it’s molded itself in Trump’s image under the stewardship of his former criminal defense lawyer, Attorney General Todd Blanche.
“我是那个说‘去做’的人，”特朗普周五在被问及阿拉斯加诉讼时承认道。
“I’m the one that said ‘do it,’” Trump acknowledged Friday, when asked about the Alaska lawsuit.
近几个月来，该部门发起了一场逮捕涉嫌非公民投票者的行动，大张旗鼓地发布了数十人被联邦调查局和国土安全部特工逮捕的模糊图像。本月初，司法部起诉加利福尼亚州，要求阻止该州统计联邦官员断定极有可能是非公民的多达2万名登记选民寄回的任何选票。
In recent months, the department has mounted a campaign to arrest alleged noncitizen voters, producing with great fanfare blurred images of dozens of people being apprehended by the FBI and Homeland Security agents. Earlier this month, the Justice Department sued California to block the state from counting any ballots received from up to 20,000 registered voters federal officials assert are likely to be noncitizens.
特朗普政府未能说服最高法院永久否决数十个州长期以来的做法，即统计在选举日前已获认证但迟到的邮寄选票。大法官们还阻止了政府最后关头的努力，该努力旨在授权邮政服务在决定是否扣留部分选民邮寄选票方面发挥核心作用。司法部民权处提起的数十起诉讼，旨在获取各州选民名册，均在全国各地的法院败诉。
The Trump administration failed to convince the Supreme Court to permanently reject the long-standing practice by dozens of states to count late-arriving mail ballots that were certified by Election Day. And the justices blocked the administration’s last-ditch effort to empower the Postal Service to play a central role in determining whether to withhold some voters’ mail-in ballots. Dozens of lawsuits by DOJ’s Civil Rights Division to obtain state voter rolls have failed in courts across the country.
司法部第三号人物、副部长斯坦利·伍德沃德于周四提起了阿拉斯加州诉讼。诉状要求州政府官员推迟认证选举结果，如果现任参议员落败，则须先就选票上出现另一名叫丹·沙利文的男子导致的“选民困惑”展开调查。但阿拉斯加州最高法院已于6月驳回了完全相同的挑战，这一裁决通常意味着针对州级选举管理的挑战到此为止。
Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward, the department’s third-ranking official, filed the Alaska lawsuit Thursday. In it, DOJ demands that state officials postpone certifying the election results if the incumbent senator is defeated until they conduct an investigation about “voter confusion” due to the presence of another man named Dan Sullivan on the ballot. But the Alaska Supreme Court rejected an identical challenge in June, a decision that would typically be the end of the line for challenges to state-level election administration.
“这是一份政治文件。这是他们又一个试图混淆视听、扭曲流程、并侵入完全属于各州专属特权领域的伎俩，”斯坦·布兰德说。他曾在1月6日相关的国会和刑事诉讼中代表特朗普核心盟友，并曾在众议长蒂普·奥尼尔（民主党-马萨诸塞州）手下担任众议院首席律师。
“This is a political document. It’s another one of their ploys to try to confuse people, distort the process and intrude into something that’s the exclusive prerogative of the states,” said Stan Brand, who represented top Trump allies in Jan. 6-related congressional and criminal proceedings and was once the top lawyer for the House under Speaker Tip O’Neill (D-Mass.). “The legal argument is one of the worst ones I’ve ever seen,” said Derek Muller, a University of Notre Dame law professor.
“其法律论据是我见过最差的之一，”圣母大学法学教授德里克·穆勒说。
Brand noted that the Justice Department manual, which guides DOJ employees, explicitly contemplates a narrow role for DOJin election challenges that is “limited to investigating and prosecuting violations of federal election laws and deterring criminal conduct.”
布兰德指出，指导司法部员工工作的《司法部手册》明确规定了司法部在选举争议中的角色应当是“仅限于调查和起诉违反联邦选举法的行为以及威慑犯罪行为”，角色定位狭窄。
“The Department has long recognized that the States — not the federal government — are responsible for administering elections, determining the validity of votes, and tabulating the results, with challenges handled by the appropriate election administrators, officials, legislatures, and courts,” the manual reads.
手册写道：“司法部早已认识到，各州——而非联邦政府——负责管理选举、确定选票效力和汇总结果，争议由相应的选举管理者、官员、立法机构和法院处理。司法部在这些程序中的作用有限，通常应避免干涉或显得干涉选举管理、汇总、确认或认证。”
“The Department has a limited role in these processes and should generally avoid interfering or appearing to interfere with election administration, tabulation, validation, or certification.”
司法部发言人周五在一份声明中表示，其决定介入是基于一项指控，即违反了《全国选民登记法》要求各州“保护选举程序完整性”的全面规定。司法部指出，阿拉斯加州选举局最初拒绝了另一位苏利文的候选人资格，认为其意在混淆选民。
A Justice Department spokesperson said in a statement Friday that its decision to weigh in is rooted in an alleged violation of the National Voter Registration Act’s blanket requirement for states to “protect the integrity of the electoral process.”Alaska’s Division of Elections initially rejected the other Sullivan’s candidacy as intended to confuse voters, DOJ noted.
“因此，司法部依据国会通过的《全国选民登记法》，正在采取必要措施，确保这种轻率的候选人资格不会破坏阿拉斯加选举的完整性或选民的意愿，”该部门发言人说。
“Therefore, the Justice Department, consistent with the National Voter Registration Act enacted by Congress, is taking the necessary steps to ensure that this frivolous candidacy does not undermine the integrity of Alaska’s election or the will of its voters,” a department spokesperson said.
政府在阿拉斯加的这一举措目前掌握在奥巴马任命的美国联邦地区法官莎伦·格里森手中。截至周五下午，她尚未对该诉讼的提起作出回应。
The administration’s Alaska gambit is in the hands of U.S. District Judge Sharon Gleason, an Obama appointee. She had not responded to the filing of the lawsuit as of Friday afternoon.
但法官对联邦政府试图微观管理州选举程序持怀疑态度，宪法设计将这些程序委托给地方官员负责。最高法院最早在周四重申，它不赞成联邦法院在“选举前夕”介入选举程序——这一原则也最近被用于推翻下级法院的裁决，恢复了密苏里州一张有利于共和党的、经过杰利蝾螈式划分的国会选区地图。
But judges look askance at efforts by the federal government to micromanage state election procedures, which are entrusted to local officials by constitutional design. The Supreme Court reaffirmed as recently as Thursday that it frowns upon federal court involvement in election procedures “on the eve of an election” — a principle it also recently enforced when it overturned lower-court rulings to reinstate a gerrymandered pro-GOP congressional map in Missouri.
但司法部在竞选末期的行动——加上其下一步将在何处出击的不确定性——让全国民主党人感到不安，并促使他们采取了紧急的法律反制行动。他们将政府的举动描述为赤裸裸地试图恐吓州和市选举工作人员，以及无论结果如何都要播撒对选举结果的不信任。
But the late-campaign activity by the Justice Department — along with uncertainty about where it will strike next — has led to unease among national Democrats and prompted an urgent legal response of their own. They describe the administration’s maneuvers as a naked attempt to intimidate state and municipal election workers, as well as sow distrust about the election results, regardless of the outcome.
来自纽约州的众议院民主党领袖哈基姆·杰弗里斯、来自纽约州的参议院民主党领袖查克·舒默以及该党的全国竞选组织，于周五敦促美国地区法官詹姆斯·博斯伯格迅速强制特朗普政府披露司法部向州和地方选举官员提出的任何要求，即要求他们避免统计某些选票或从选民名册中删除一部分选民。
House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York, Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer of New York and the party’s national campaign organizations urged U.S. District Judge James Boasberg on Friday to quickly force the Trump administration to reveal any demands the Justice Department has made to state and local election officials to refrain from counting certain ballots or to remove a subset of voters from the rolls.
该请求还寻求司法部致选举官员的通信证据，“涉及因公职职责而对州或地方选举官员进行刑事起诉、调查或任何其他形式的法律行动的内容。”截至周五早些时候下午，作为奥巴马任命的博斯伯格尚未对该请求表态。
The request also seeks evidence of communications from DOJ to election officials “that reference criminal prosecution, investigation, or any other form of legal action against state or local election officials in relation to their public duties.”As of early Friday afternoon, Boasberg, an Obama appointee, had not yet weighed in on the request.