What Happened
The Guardian reported Friday that the Justice Department sent a federal prosecutor to observe ballot processing in Los Angeles as President Trump continued making baseless claims that California Democrats were rigging primary results.
LA County's registrar-recorder said the office was notified late Thursday that the U.S. attorney's office would send an assistant U.S. attorney to the Ballot Processing Center. The person arrived Friday morning, received an overview of the public observation program and took a walkthrough of ballot-processing operations.
The counting was slow because California was still processing millions of ballots. The Guardian reported that more than 3.6 million ballots remained statewide, mail ballots postmarked by Election Day and received by June 9 could still be valid, and counties had until June 15 to finish counting most ballots.
Why This Matters
Slow counts are annoying. They are also normal in states that rely heavily on mail voting and prioritize counting valid ballots accurately. The danger is when ordinary counting time gets recast as evidence of cheating before the process is done.
Federal observation can be legitimate. The absurd part here is the surrounding fog: public fraud allegations, still-uncounted ballots, close races and a president declaring suspicion because numbers changed as ballots were counted. That is not how arithmetic becomes a crime scene.
The Dumb Part With The Drama Lamp
The dumb part is acting shocked that mail ballots appear during mail-ballot counting. Trump told reporters that California "found a lot of mail-in ballots," according to The Guardian. Yes. That is generally what happens when the ballot-processing center processes ballots.
It is like accusing a bakery of suspiciously finding bread in the oven. The thing people put there is now being counted, and somehow the existence of the thing is treated like a plot twist.
The Bottom Line
California officials said they were still counting valid ballots, LA County accommodated the federal observer, and the election results were still being finalized. The real stupid shit is turning a slow count into conspiracy fuel before the counting is even finished.
Sources
The Guardian: California governor's race: DoJ sends in federal observer over slow count
CNN: Justice Department prosecutor sent to observe LA ballot counting after Trump fraud claims