如果你是律师，而你的客户让你提起一桩毫无根据的诉讼，你应该拒绝。美国司法部显然不受这一道德义务的约束。
If you’re a lawyer and your client tells you to file a meritless case, you’re supposed to say no. The US Justice Department is apparently not constrained by this ethical obligation.
这有助于解释为什么司法部上周对阿拉斯加州提起诉讼，要求禁止该州选举结果生效：这件事的源头不是司法部律师，而是总统唐纳德·特朗普本人。从政治角度看，司法部试图破坏下周选举结果的努力令人担忧，尽管并不令人意外。然而，从法律角度看，几乎没有什么可担心的。
That helps explain why the department filed a lawsuit against Alaska last week seeking an injunction against the results of the state’s election : It stemmed not from DOJ lawyers, but from President Donald Trump himself. From a political standpoint, the department’s efforts to undermine the results of next week’s elections are concerning, if unsurprising. As a legal matter, however, there is little to worry about.
特朗普上周发帖称，阿拉斯加州有两名竞选美国参议员的候选人都叫丹·沙利文，这“完全令人困惑”，法院应该把不是共和党现任议员的那一位移除。但候选人与其他候选人同名并参选，并不构成任何形式的违法。没有任何指控称选票的形成存在错误。即使有，法院也无法知道哪些投给哪位候选人的选票应被排除。
Trump posted last week that it is “totally confusing” that there are two candidates for US Senate in Alaska named Dan Sullivan, and that the courts should remove the one who is not the Republican incumbent. But it is not a legal violation of any kind for a candidate to run for office who has the same name as one of the other candidates. There is no allegation of error in the formation of the ballots. Even if there were, there would be no way a court could know which votes cast on behalf of which candidate should be excluded.
与此同时，在加利福尼亚州，司法部已在选举前请求联邦地区法院阻止该州统计约2万张邮寄选票。这一请求效果甚微，以至于司法部采取了不同寻常的步骤，在地区法院尚未有机会举行听证之前就请求上诉法院介入。审理该案的上诉法官合议庭似乎相当怀疑。政府甚至连证明所列收件人不是公民、甚至证明他们确实收到了选票都困难重重。
In California, meanwhile, the DOJ has filed a pre-election request for a federal district court to block the state from counting some 20,000 mail-in votes . It had so little effect that the department took the unusual step of asking the court of appeals to weigh in before the district court had had a chance to hold a hearing. The panel of appellate judges who heard that case seemed pretty skeptical. The government had trouble arguing even that it could demonstrate that the named recipients were non-citizens, or even that they had actually gotten ballots.
这一切都不算意外。自特朗普10年前首次竞选公职以来，他一直试图利用法院干预选举。而最高法院一直拒绝介入帮助他。
None of this qualifies as unexpected. Since Trump first ran for office 10 years ago, he has tried to use the courts to meddle in elections. And the Supreme Court has consistently declined to intervene to help him.
要理解共和党人在选举前的虚张声势和民主党人的紧张不安，最好的办法是把这一切都看作一种新常态的一部分。人们很容易忘记，但当前围绕选举结果的现实扭曲力场并非始于特朗普2020年的败选，而是始于2016年。在特朗普赢得那次选举之前，他就已经声称选举“绝对被操纵”，而且这种情况“在许多投票站”都在发生。
The best way to understand Republicans’ pre-election feints and Democrats’ jitters is to see them all as part of a new normal. It’s easy to forget, but the current reality distortion field around electoral results dates not to Trump’s loss in 2020 but to 2016. Before Trump won that election, he was already alleging that the election was “absolutely rigged” and that this was happening “at many polling places.”
2016年10月17日，他发推文说：“当然，在选举日当天和之前存在大规模选民欺诈。”无论当时还是现在，特朗普不断破坏选举结果合法性这一努力的目 的不仅仅是他想赢。大肆谈论选民欺诈是特朗普对支持者那种被剥夺权力和选举权的感觉表达共情的一种方式。除了这一政治目标之外，特朗普从一开始也明白，他可以通过散布对方在作弊的想法，来对冲败选带来的难堪。
On October 17, 2016, he tweeted, “Of course there is large scale voter fraud happening on and before election day.”Then and now, the purpose of Trump’s unceasing efforts to undermine the legitimacy of electoral outcomes is not just that he wants to win. Talking up voter fraud was a way for Trump to empathize with his supporters’ sense of being disempowered and disenfranchised. Beyond that political objective, Trump also understood from the start that he could hedge against the embarrassment of defeat by seeding the idea that the other side was cheating him.
如果他赢了，没有人会记得他选举前的说法。如果他输了，他可以继续他那套受害者的叙事。
If he won, no one would remember his pre-election claims. If he lost, he could continue with his aggrieved narrative.
但是，尽管这些案件一贯败诉，这种如今已常规化的选前指控选举舞弊的做法仍要付出代价：它们削弱了人们对民主进程的信任。恢复这种信任的一个方法是强调还有第三个政府部门——司法部门——也负有捍卫我们民主的职责。如果有更多美国人开始正确认识这类法律尝试所带来的危险，这可能会削弱未来提出此类主张的动机。
But even though these cases consistently lose, there is a cost to this now-regularized practice of alleging election fraud before an election: They weaken trust in the democratic process. One way to restore that trust is to emphasize that there is a third branch of the government, the judiciary, that is also charged with safeguarding our democracy. If more Americans started correctly discounting the dangers associated with such legal attempts, it could weaken the incentives for such claims to be made in the future.
最高法院唯一一次果断干预选举，是在“布什诉戈尔案”中，该案源于2000年大选。当时并没有欺诈指控。质疑最初计票结果的诉讼来自阿尔·戈尔一方。在佛罗里达州初步计票后，乔治·W·布什已被宣布获胜。直到戈尔团队在州法院启动重新计票后，最高法院才最终介入，终止了重新计票。
The only time the Supreme Court has decisively intervened in an election was in , the case that emerged from the 2000 election. There was no allegation of fraud. The litigation challenging the initial count came from Al Gore’s side. George W. Bush had been declared the winner after the initial Florida count. Only after the Gore team got the recount going in state court did the Supreme Court ultimately intervene to end the recount.
诚然，那是一段不幸的插曲。（完全披露：我当时是戈尔阵营的一名新手律师。）但为最高法院说句公道话，它并没有推翻选举结果。此后也再未这样做过。
That was an unfortunate episode, to be sure. (Full disclosure: I was a baby lawyer on the Gore side.) But to give the Supreme Court some credit, it did not flip the electoral results. And it has not done so since. Trump’s multiple efforts to subvert democracy after the 2020 election still haunt our politics, as they should.
特朗普在2020年大选后多次破坏民主的行为，至今仍困扰着我们的政治，这也理所应当。2021年1月6日的记忆依然清晰。但保护民主是一项超越党派的事业，过度担忧特朗普政府如今惯用且屡屡失败的手段——将法院作为 delegitimization（去合法化）进程中的工具之一——并无助于这一事业。这些手段不会得逞。《彭博观点》其他内容：更多内容，请 。
And the memory of January 6, 2021, is still crisp. But protecting democracy is a cause that rises above politics, and it is not served by too much fretting about the Trump administration’s now-standard and unsuccessful attempts to use the courts as one vector in the delegitimization process. They won’t work. Elsewhere in Bloomberg Opinion: For more, to our newsletter.