The start of early voting is normally a time for civic celebration. For Aaron Reitz, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Texas, it was an opportunity to make a threat.

Standing beside a Bible and a framed photograph of Donald Trump, Reitz recorded a video promising there would be no “crooked local election administrators.” They “have a duty to prevent illegal voting,” he said, “and I’m here to make sure they do their job.”

Then he got to the point: “If you violate federal election law, I will hunt you down and prosecute you.”

Reitz did not cite a single example of election malfeasance. Nor did he offer any evidence of fraud.

But deterring bad actors wasn’t his real goal. His message was aimed squarely at the county clerks and poll workers who run our elections. And, of course, he was playing to an audience of one in the White House.

He is not alone.

On Friday, Acting Deputy Attorney General Trent McCotter sent a letter warning California election officials that they could face criminal liability if they count ballots as state law requires. At issue are mail ballots sent to 20,000 voters the DOJ claims are “likely” noncitizens.

The letter made clear that anyone who “knowingly tabulate[s] ballots cast by individuals identified by federal agencies as noncitizens” risks becoming an aider and abettor to a federal crime.

Note that McCotter is not describing ballots confirmed to be from noncitizens, only ballots the federal government thinks likely are. Under this theory, any list of voters the Trump administration wants excluded becomes grounds for threatening criminal charges against the officials who count their ballots.

To sharpen the point, Bill Essayli, the First Assistant U.S. Attorney in Los Angeles, amplified the warning. He cited the federal aiding-and-abetting statute that, under the Trump DOJ’s theory, would make election officials guilty of a felony.

As if choreographed for maximum effect, Trump then shared the letter on Truth Social and added his own threat aimed at California’s election officials: “They will all go to jail for a long period of time.”

None of this is improvised. Trump laid out his plan in an executive order last March.

In it, he directed the attorney general to “prioritize the investigation and, as appropriate, the prosecution of State and local officials” who issue ballots to people deemed ineligible to vote.

Unsurprisingly, the order cites the same statutes McCotter and Essayli invoked last week.

In June, a federal district judge blocked this portion of the order. In August, the Supreme Court reinstated it, concluding that the states lacked a “well-founded fear” that their officials would be prosecuted.

Last month, I predicted that the DOJ would turn its fire on state election officials on the pretext that they had permitted illegal voting. Now, two weeks before Election Day, that exact scenario is playing out.

And it is unfolding against a backdrop of faulty data and a DOJ desperate to please Trump.

On Friday, McCotter told election officials that counting ballots from people on the list could expose them to criminal liability. On Monday, he admitted that some of the 20,000 names flagged by the DOJ might be wrong. “There may be some names on there who it turns out ultimately are citizens,” he told reporters. “We’re not perfect.”

In essence, the DOJ is telling election workers that they must either disenfranchise lawful voters or risk criminal prosecution, because the DOJ is “not perfect.”

We have seen how imperfect these lists can be. In Nevada, federal officials flagged nearly 16,000 voters as potential noncitizens. That number eventually dropped to 185. In the end, not one of the voters flagged by the Trump administration has turned out to be a noncitizen.

The same pattern is playing out in California. In July, DHS claimed that as many as 190,832 noncitizens might be registered to vote. Last week, the figure was 20,000. To be clear, I do not know the actual number, but it is certainly far lower.

What is clear is who pays for these mistakes. The voter certainly does. But so does the county clerk who faces prosecution for counting votes in accordance with state law.

The goal of Trump’s executive order and the threats we are now seeing in Texas and California is not to catch noncitizen voters. That crime is vanishingly rare.

Reitz’s promise to “hunt you down” and McCotter’s letter are two versions of the same message: count the wrong ballots, and you could be next.

Displease Trump and the weaponization of the government will be aimed at you.

The goal is to intimidate election workers into not counting votes that Trump and his cronies don’t want counted. Why else issue these threats two weeks before Election Day, with no evidence of fraud and a list the DOJ admits is flawed?

This is the plan Trump laid out in March, and it is the plan his prosecutors are carrying out now.

“We’re not perfect” may be the most honest thing the Trump Justice Department has said all year. They may not be perfect, but they are vindictive.