President Trump opened a new front in the election integrity debate Thursday night, saying the Department of Homeland Security had found “approximately 278,000 non-citizens who are registered to vote in federal elections.” California was one of four states he specifically named.

Gov. Gavin Newsom immediately rejected the claim.

Fine.

Then prove it.

Not with press releases. Not with social media posts.

With transparency.

On Friday, First Assistant US Attorney Bill Essayli responded with a simple challenge: Open California’s voter rolls and allow a federal audit.

That is exactly the right approach.

Every institution that expects the public’s trust is subject to scrutiny. Banks are audited. Public companies are audited. Government agencies are audited. Even political campaigns must open their books.

Why should California’s election system be any different?

Nobody is claiming widespread fraud here. What is being claimed is simple: Public confidence comes from letting someone check your work, not from a press release insisting everything is fine.

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And there is more than enough reason for a thorough review.

The California Post has reported extensively on voter registrations tied to Skid Row, where federal prosecutors already secured a guilty plea from longtime petition circulator Brenda Lee Brown Armstrong. She admitted paying homeless individuals to register to vote and provide false information on their forms.

The Post later found other Skid Row residents who said they, too, had been offered money to sign registration paperwork. Federal agents have since descended on Skid Row, interviewing witnesses as the investigation expands.

In Orange County, prosecutors found a Costa Mesa woman who had registered her dog to vote and cast a ballot in the dog’s name. That ballot was counted before anyone caught it. She pleaded guilty to knowingly registering a nonexistent person.

Orange County investigated, prosecuted and punished someone for registering a dog to vote.

Yet many of the same state leaders resist comparable scrutiny of the voter rolls themselves.

California’s political leadership has spent years treating citizenship as an afterthought in public policy. Driver’s licenses regardless of immigration status. Expanded taxpayer-funded benefits. A steady erosion of what citizenship is even supposed to mean for eligibility.

Whether you support those policies or oppose them, they raise an obvious question: How rigorously is citizenship verified in the one place it really counts?

California has already crossed that line in one city. San Francisco allows noncitizens to vote in school board elections. In Los Angeles, City Council members pushed to let noncitizens vote in city races, including mayor, City Council and the school board. That effort was pulled from the ballot. It has not gone away.

You cannot spend years treating citizenship like a technicality and then act surprised when voters wonder if it is still being checked at the ballot box.

Does any of this prove widespread fraud? No.

But it absolutely justifies asking more questions.

That is how investigations work. You follow the evidence wherever it leads.

If Gov. Newsom honestly believes California’s elections are as secure as he says, he should be the loudest voice demanding a comprehensive review of the state’s voter rolls, the same rolls DHS says include hundreds of thousands of noncitizen registrations.

Open every record federal investigators are legally entitled to inspect. Let them identify registrations belonging to noncitizens, deceased voters, duplicate registrants and anyone who shouldn’t be there.

If the review finds nothing, California wins. Confidence in our elections grows stronger.

If it uncovers real problems, Californians deserve to know that too.

Either outcome serves democracy.

Instead, Californians are asked to accept categorical assurances while state leaders resist the very transparency that could settle the question. That is a dubious disconnect. The answer is not more accusations. It is more facts.

Asking questions does not undermine confidence. Treating a fair question like an insult does.

For too long, California’s political leadership has responded to election integrity concerns by attacking the people raising them instead of answering with facts.

That approach has failed.

Confidence cannot be demanded. It has to be earned.

Gov. Newsom says President Trump is wrong. And unlike the rest of us, he’s in a position to help prove it.

Open the voter rolls. Let federal investigators conduct their audit. Follow the evidence wherever it leads.

Either way, you do not get people to trust you by telling them to. You earn it, in the open.

Jon Fleischman, a longtime strategist in California politics, writes at SoDoesItMatter.com.