US Judge Blocks Trump Administration’s Voter Data Checks
A United States federal judge has ruled against a plan by the Justice Department. This plan used state voter data to check against a federal immigration database. The judge found this process unlawful.
Judge Sparkle Sooknanan made the decision on Friday. She ruled that the government unlawfully tried to identify voters it thought were not eligible. The Justice Department wanted to remove these people from voter lists.
This ruling is a setback for President Donald Trump. His administration has tried to increase federal control over elections.
Judge Sooknanan supported Common Cause, a watchdog group. She said the government did not warn enough about the risk. The government could wrongly remove eligible citizens from voter lists. The database used, called SAVE, has errors. It can have old citizenship records. This could wrongly identify naturalized US citizens.
Judge Sooknanan wrote that federal law gives states the power to decide who votes. The federal government cannot take this power. The Justice Department said it is looking at the ruling.
Ming Cheung is a senior lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union. She said the ruling is clear. The Trump administration cannot use the federal government to cause problems in elections. It cannot put voters’ rights at risk.
Last year, President Trump told the department to stop ineligible people from voting. This happened even though research shows voter fraud is rare. The department then asked for voter lists from nearly all 50 states. These lists contained private information.
Eighteen states agreed to share their data. Most of these states are led by Republicans. The department checked their data against the SAVE database. It then marked people identified as non-citizens. These people faced removal from voter lists.
The department also sued 30 states and Washington, DC. This was because they refused to give their voter data. Twenty-six of these lawsuits have been dismissed.
In a separate case in June, Judge Sooknanan also stopped the expanded use of the SAVE database for voter checks. The US Supreme Court later paused that order for a short time. Federal law does not allow large voter list clean-ups 90 days before a federal election. This may limit the ruling’s effect before the November 3 vote.
