US judge blocks sending voter lists to states — Jerusalem Post
US federal judge Tanya Chutkan temporarily barred President Donald Trump’s administration from sending states lists of registered voters whom federal authorities consider possible non-citizens. As reported by the Jerusalem Post, the court also prohibited the Department of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security from requiring election authorities to separately set aside such people’s ballots or not count them until citizenship is confirmed.
Risk of disenfranchisement
Chutkan, who works in Washington, said the administration’s data may be unreliable. According to her, this creates a risk of disenfranchising Americans who legally registered to vote.
Rights advocates and privacy defenders who went to court argued that transferring such lists violates the Privacy Act of 1974. This law limits the federal government’s ability to distribute sensitive private information.
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The Trump administration said its letters to officials in California and Washington state were an attempt to enforce the federal ban on non-citizen voting. Non-citizen voting is illegal in the United States, and available evidence indicates that such cases occur extremely rarely.
Other court rulings
Earlier, a federal judge in Los Angeles rejected the Department of Justice’s request to temporarily set aside mail-in ballots from more than 20,000 registered California voters whom the department considered possible non-citizens. An appeals court also denied the department emergency relief pending its appeal.
At the same time, in another case, a panel of the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit allowed the government to threaten state and local election officials with criminal prosecution for failing to comply with requirements concerning possible non-citizens. This ruling is not binding on Chutkan. Separately, a federal court in San Francisco ordered the Department of Justice to stop making such threats.
