Bob Meyer

If you're concerned about the constitutionality of temporarily infringing on California voter rights by the DOJ, consider this analogy. Imagine the DOJ identifies 20,000 residents in a state it believes might be legally prohibited from possessing firearms. Rather than first verifying those individuals are prohibited, the DOJ demands that state police confiscate their firearms until their eligibility can be established. Some of those people are undoubtedly lawful gun owners, but the DOJ argues that preventing even one gun crime justifies temporarily taking firearms away from thousands of potentially innocent people. Would we accept that reasoning as sufficient to override Second and Fourth Amendment protections? That's essentially the constitutional concern raised by the DOJ's demand to sequester ballots from 20,000 registered California voters it believes might be noncitizens. The right to vote of lawful voters has a very real chance of being infringed. Does the government's desire to prevent unlawful activity justify restricting constitutional rights before it has established that the affected individuals are legally disqualified from exercising them?