Federal judge rules against Trump DoJ’s policy of collecting state voter rolls – The Guardian

Federal judge rules against Trump DoJ’s policy of collecting state voter rolls  The Guardian

Judge says justice department policy of checking state voter rolls against a federal immigration database is unlawful A federal judge ruled on Friday that the US justice department’s policy of collecting states’ unredacted voter rolls to check them against a federal immigration database is unlawful. The ruling, by the US district judge Sparkle Sooknanan, was a setback for Donald Trump, who has pushed his administration to ramp up investigations into non-citizen voting ahead of the November midterm elections, with control of Congress at stake. The department’s list maintenance policy, adopted to comply with the president’s election integrity executive order, violated privacy laws and risked disenfranchising voters, Sooknanan said. “The court vacates a policy that has removed United States citizens from the voter rolls in their home states and risks disenfranchising many more – a policy that flies in the face of duly enacted laws designed to protect Americans,” Sooknanan wrote in the 78-page ruling.

Sooknanan said the policy not only violated federal laws, but also that the justice department did not have the authority to enact it because Congress gave the states, not the federal government, control over the maintenance of their voter rolls. “Behind all the window dressing, the challenged policy represents the federal government’s attempt to decide who gets to vote,” Sooknanan wrote. “But Congress has left that