Attorney General Todd Blanche refused on Thursday to rule out the Justice Department seeking to intervene in states’ certification of the midterm election results. Asked whether he could rule out action that could delay ballot counting or certification, Blanche said there could be some doomsday scenario in which the department would get involved, and that it was not proper to make conclusory statements about the future.
He was explicit about what he is not doing. It is not the department’s intention to improperly interfere with elections or the state certification process, he said, and he is not planning his days around being somewhere to stop a certification. What the department is trying to do, he said, is guarantee that only eligible people vote. The remarks came as the Justice Department pursues election litigation against states, including a suit against California to compel review of 18,000 registered voters it suspects could be noncitizens, and weighs further cases after earlier voter-data suits.
The legal baseline matters for reading the remarks. Under the Constitution and federal law, elections are administered by state and local officials, and federal law does not specifically authorise the Justice Department to challenge ballots or delay a state’s certification of results. Its established roles are protecting civil rights and prosecuting election-law violations.
That is why a refusal to rule out, rather than any announced action, is the story. With voting already under way and polls closing on November 3, the statement leaves state officials and courts to price a federal intervention that the attorney general describes as hypothetical and that no filing has yet attempted. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer responded sharply, and the reaction will be tested by whether any DOJ filing touches certification itself rather than voter rolls.