Federal Threats Take Toll on California Election Officials

California election officials say threats of criminal prosecution from the Trump administration are hurting their mental health, interfering with their work, and causing staffing worries as the state gets ready to count ballots in the November midterm elections, ABC News reported.

In court filings submitted Friday, local election leaders said they feel anxious and frustrated about the Justice Department’s efforts to investigate the state’s voter registration records and pressure county officials to act against voters the federal government suspects are ineligible.

Francisco Diaz, registrar of voters in San Benito County, said he began making contingency plans for his office after Homeland Security officials sent a letter threatening to prosecute him. He worried about being arrested and how his absence could affect election operations. He also thought about telling his wife and parents.

“I felt fear and anxiety,” Diaz wrote in a court declaration. Last Friday, he said, four poll workers didn’t show up for work, and he thinks stress and anxiety may have contributed to their absence.

Kristin Connelly, Contra Costa County’s registrar of voters, said she felt overwhelmed by how much time her office spent responding to the federal demands and was worried employees might leave their jobs because of the threats.

The declarations were part of a lawsuit by civil rights groups and labor unions trying to stop the federal government from intimidating election officials. The filings show some of the personal and workplace pressures that local officials face while doing their jobs.

The Justice Department issued grand jury subpoenas to California election officials this week as part of a criminal investigation into the state’s voter rolls and separately asked federal courts to impound 20,000 California ballots that the Trump administration claimed had been sent to non-citizens. The latter effort was rejected by federal courts, including yesterday by the Supreme Court.

The administration has sought information about people it suspects may have voted illegally and has warned local officials about potential criminal liability if they process ballots from ineligible voters, even though there is no evidence of non-citizens voting in even remotely significant numbers.

Matt Morales, Santa Clara County’s top election official, said the federal government’s actions have had a chilling effect on his staff and could make it harder for counties to hire and keep the workers they need to run elections.

On Friday, U.S. District Judge Trina Thompson temporarily barred the Justice and Homeland Security departments from threatening, intimidating, or coercing state and local election workers into stopping ballot processing based solely on federal allegations that voters are ineligible.