The Trump administration has ordered every judge of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals to leave the bench and personally knock on the doors of more than twenty thousand Californians suspected of voting without citizenship, demanding each resident produce a passport on the spot before any ballot in the state may be counted. The judges began in Sacramento on Thursday morning, carrying clipboards and folding chairs, and were instructed to remain on each porch until the question was answered.
«We are not waiting for a hearing schedule,» a Justice Department official said. «The judges will walk the precincts themselves, block by block, and they will not return to San Francisco until every door has been knocked on twice.» The Ninth Circuit has been assigned a route map covering eleven counties, with overnight parking arranged for the court's buses and a portable gavel stand erected at each cul-de-sac so that rulings may be issued from the sidewalk.
California officials responded by stationing county clerks at the end of every driveway to hand the judges fresh ballots and ask them to vote first, arguing that anyone who knocks that persistently has clearly moved into the neighborhood. By Friday afternoon, three appellate judges had been added to local voter rolls, one had been nominated for a school board seat, and a fourth was reportedly mowing a lawn on Folsom Street while awaiting instructions.
«If they knock on my door one more time,» a Sacramento resident said, «I'm putting them on the homeowners association.»