我的加州同胞们，让我们先做个智力测试。我们伟大的州从10月初就开始投票了。人们一直在邮寄选票、将选票投入收集点，甚至亲自前往现场投票中心。所以，如果你知道——或者哪怕只是假设——选举官员在选票送达时做的事情不仅仅是把它们扔成一堆，请举手。恭喜举手者们。你们现在正式比整个美国司法部更聪明。或者至少更诚实。
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.
周日，司法部律师设法让第九巡回上诉法院的一个三法官小组召开了一次罕见的紧急听证会，因为，天哪，人们竟然真的在投票，而加州正在处理选票！谁能想得到？尽管依法各县必须及时点算选票；尽管历次选举都是如此进行；尽管州务卿在网上每天公布收到多少张选票；尽管有洛杉矶选票处理过程的实时摄像头直播——不知怎的，美国政府声称它不知道这一正常选举程序正在发生。
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.
直到周五晚些时候，司法部律师读到了加州司法部律师提交的一份文件，文件列明洛杉矶确实在拆开邮寄选票，美国司法部才意识到选票正在被拆开。洛杉矶目前已处理约60万张。加州副检察长塞缪尔·P·西格尔辩称，这“表面上就荒谬”。
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.
凭借这一先前“无法知晓”的信息，特朗普的律师们恳请上诉法院将他们那站不住脚、在宪法层面存疑的案件从已承诺周二就其请求作出裁决的法官手中夺走，并立即给予他们一项禁令，以推进他们的选举阴谋论。大多数人都知道这场闹剧的来龙去脉，但这里简要回顾一下。
Armed with this previously unknowable information, Trump's lawyers were begging the appeals court to take their flimsy, constitutionally questionable case away from the judge who had already promised to rule on their requests on Tuesday and immediately give them an injunction to further their election conspiracy claims. Most folks are aware of the background of this drama, but here's the quick recap.
特朗普总统多年来虚假且不断地声称，民主党与无证人员串通，帮助他们偷偷进入美国，作为交换，这些人大量非法为民主党投票。这种情况并未发生，但总统痴迷于这一阴谋论，甚至动用司法部攻击各州——尤其是加利福尼亚州——试图证明他的妄想是正确的，或许还能顺便破坏民主。
President Trump for years has falsely but incessantly claimed that Democrats are colluding with undocumented people to help them sneak into the country in exchange for illegally voting in mass numbers for Democrats. This is not happening, but the president is obsessed with this conspiracy, so much so that he is weaponizing the Department of Justice to attack states, California in particular, in a bid to prove his delusions correct, and perhaps as a bonus, undermine democracy.
几个月前，司法部来到加利福尼亚州，声称掌握一份名单，认为其中 19 万人非法登记投票。此后该名单已缩减至 2 万人。尽管政府调动所有调查力量全力以赴，但在这场不择手段的行动中，联邦检方在加州仅起诉了 28 人，而且并非所有案件都经得起考验。
A few months ago, the DOJ came to the state of California and claimed it had a list of 190,000 people it believed were illegally registered to vote. That list has since dropped to 20,000. But with all the investigative power of the government hard at work on this, only 28 people in California have been indicted by the feds during this no-holds-barred effort, and it looks as though not all of those cases will hold up.
不以为意，特朗普律师团试图让加州法官下令该州（及洛杉矶）搁置其声称存疑的选票。他们请求该案法官发布临时限制令，强制洛杉矶县照办，法官同意在下周初以已加快的程序对此请求作出裁决。但随后特朗普律师团得知所有选票处理流程后，要求法官改在周六下午前裁决——其理由似乎站不住脚。当承办此案的联邦法官未在周六作出裁决时——这是一个荒谬的要求，甚至未留出足够时间让律师提交备忘录——联邦方面跑到第九巡回上诉法院，声称未在周六裁决等同于事实上驳回了他们的请求。
Undeterred, Trump lawyers tried to get a California judge to order the state (and Los Angeles) to set aside ballots that it claims to have doubts about. They asked the judge in that case for a temporary restraining order forcing L.A. County to do that, and the judge agreed to rule on that request early next week, in an already-expedited fashion. But then the Trump lawyers learned about all that ballot processing and demanded the judge instead rule by Saturday afternoon — though the reasoning here seems iffy. When the federal judge assigned to the case didn't rule by Saturday, an absurd ask that didn't even allow enough time for lawyers to file briefs, the feds ran to the 9th Circuit, claiming that failing to rule on Saturday was a de facto denial of their request.
基本上，特朗普律师团似乎在主张两点。第一，一旦选票被计数，就无法“取消计数”，如果存在非法选票，会损害所有选民的利益。好吧，这点可以接受。
Basically, it seems the Trump lawyers were arguing two things. First, that once ballots are counted, they can't be uncounted, and if there are illegal ballots, that hurts all voters. Sure, OK. But again, there is no evidence this is happening in any widespread fashion, and the lists of potential vote scofflaws compiled by the government have been shown to be error-ridden.
但同样，没有证据表明这种情况正在大规模发生，而政府编制的潜在违规选民名单已被证明错误百出。这些名单可能还涉及使用一个神秘的非政府“第三方”来收集信息，甚至连特朗普的律师周日也无法确认该第三方的身份。司法部律师还声称，他们刚刚得知，一旦选票从信封中取出，就无法将该选票重新与投出它的选民联系起来——因为我们的投票是匿名的。
They may also involve the use of a mysterious non-government "third party" to gather the information that not even the Trump lawyers could identify Sunday. DOJ lawyers also claimed they had just learned that once a ballot is taken out of the envelope, there was no way to reconnect that ballot to the voter who cast it — because our votes are anonymous.
因此，必须在这2万张选票与信封内的文件分离之前将其抓取。律师们没有解释为什么他们需要知道某人如何投票，才能确认其非法投票。信封由县选举官员保管，但显然特朗普的律师认为将信封与特定选票关联起来至关重要。但问题是——根本没有足够的非法选民来左右洛杉矶的选举，更不用说加利福尼亚州的选举了。
Therefore, the 20,000 ballots had to be grabbed before they were separated from the documents inside. The lawyers did not explain why they needed to know how a person voted to confirm they illegally voted. The envelopes are retained by county elections officials, but apparently the Trump lawyers feel it's critical to tie them to particular votes. But here's the thing — there are simply not enough illegal voters to sway a Los Angeles election, or a California one for that matter.
我们目前有一套筛查有问题选票的制度，还有一套独立的刑事司法制度可以追究非法选民的责任。大选前两周不是要求扣留选票的时候——除非你是想破坏信任。上诉法院的法官似乎对联邦律师的论点并不买账，不止一次质疑第九巡回上诉法院是否拥有管辖权，因为选举由各州负责，而非联邦政府。甚至有人宣读了第十修正案。
We have a system to ferrets out problematic ballots right now, and a separate criminal system that can hold illegal voters accountable. Two weeks before an election isn't a time to demand ballots be withheld — unless you're trying to undermine trust. The appellate judges did not seem impressed by the federal laywers' arguments, questioning more than once if the 9th Circuit even had jurisdiction since states are in charge of elections, not the federal government. There was even some reading of the 10th Amendment.
你知道，就是那些“不要践踏我”类型的人喜欢的那条，内容是：“宪法未授予合众国、也未禁止各州行使的权力，由各州各自保留，或由人民保留。”我们预计很快就会有裁决，但真正的问题依然存在：为什么要搞紧急动作？
You know, the one the don't-tread-on-me types love that reads: "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States." We should expect a ruling sooner rather than later, but the real question remains, why the emergency?
美国司法部正卷入华盛顿特区的另一场投票诉讼，原告由加州大学洛杉矶分校投票权项目领衔，要求法院对政府自行制定的全国选民名单以及使用不完善、秘密的信息收集方式予以禁令。事实上，原案已从一名特朗普任命的法官调至一名比尔·克林顿任命的法官审理。有人猜测此调动可能不被联邦当局所青睐，尽管克林顿任命的法官大卫·O·卡特（David O. Carter）因在该领域的经验而接手此案。
The DOJ is involved in another voting lawsuit in Washington, D.C., where the plaintiffs, led by the UCLA Voting Rights Project, have asked for a restraining order of their own stopping the government from creating national lists of who it thinks should vote, and using janky, secretive information gathering to do it. It's also true that the original case was reassigned from a Trump-appointed judge to one appointed by Bill Clinton. There has been speculation the switch may have been viewed unfavorably by the feds, though the Clinton-appointed judge, David O. Carter, was given the case because of his experience in the subject matter.
特区的禁令可能在未来几天内作出裁决。我并不是说这两个案件有关，也不是说法官的身份应当或确实重要，但特朗普时期司法部在加州的论点基本上是其2万人的名单信息非常可靠、坚实。如果特区联邦法官首先认定政府的信息收集可能既是越权也是草率，那么这将使另一位法官，甚至上诉法院更难认定该名单如此关键以至于必须介入。因此可能存在紧急情况，只是并非政府所声称的那种紧急。
The D.C. restraining order could be decided in the next few days. I'm not saying the cases are related, or that the judge should or does matter, but the Trump DOJ's argument in California is basically that its list of 20,000 is really solid, reliable information. If the D.C. federal judge rules first that the government information gathering is potentially both an overreach and sloppy, it makes it that much harder for another judge, or the appellate court for that matter, to rule that the list is so critical that they must step in. So maybe there is an emergency. Just not the one the government is claiming.