Judge Blocks the Trump Administration From Pressuring States Over Voter Lists, Hours Before the Polls Open

A federal judge has temporarily barred the Trump administration from moving ahead with a plan it says would prevent noncitizen voting, but that critics say risks disenfranchising eligible voters and infringing on states' authority over elections, Reuters reported.

U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan barred the Justice Department and the Department of Homeland Security from sending states lists of registered voters the administration says may not be citizens, and from asking state election officials to separate out those voters' ballots or not count them until citizenship is proven. Over the past month, the administration had sent letters to officials in California and Washington state demanding they not count ballots from people on such lists, Reuters reported.

Voting-rights and privacy advocates who brought the case alleged the administration was violating the Privacy Act of 1974, which restricts the federal government's ability to disclose sensitive private information. The Justice Department, in a court filing on Saturday, said its letters were part of an effort to enforce a federal law banning noncitizen voting and did not amount to a distinct policy subject to review by a federal court.

Chutkan, a Washington-based appointee of former President Barack Obama, said the administration's data may not be reliable, meaning there was a risk that lawfully registered voters would be disenfranchised, Reuters reported. Reuters noted the background fact both sides argue around: noncitizen voting is illegal, and all available evidence shows it is exceedingly rare.

The ruling is the latest in a series of legal setbacks for the administration's efforts to assert federal control over election administration ahead of the November 3 midterms. An appeals court on Friday rejected the Justice Department's request for an emergency order pending appeal; the same day, a federal judge in San Francisco ordered the department to stop threatening to prosecute state and local election officials who do not comply with its demands; and a federal judge in Los Angeles had already rejected the department's request to order California to set aside mailed ballots from more than 20,000 registered voters it said were likely not citizens — the case this station has followed as it reached the Supreme Court on Monday.

For voters in Dallas and Tarrant Counties, the practical meaning is simple: Texas was not one of the states that received a list, and the ballots cast here on Tuesday will be counted under Texas's own rules, administered by the counties — which is, in the end, what Monday's ruling in Washington was about.