US judge rules Justice Department's voter roll checks unlawful
A federal judge in Washington ruled the Justice Department unlawfully checked state voter rolls against an immigration database. The department said it is reviewing the decision, weeks before the midterms.
Archive image · Photo: G. Edward Johnson / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0 (cropped and resized)
A U.S. federal judge has ruled that the Justice Department acted unlawfully in using state voter rolls to search for ineligible voters. U.S. District Judge Sparkle Sooknanan sided on Friday with the watchdog group Common Cause and vacated the policy. The department had cross-checked state voter lists against the Department of Homeland Security's SAVE database to flag people it considered ineligible for removal. "The challenged policy represents the federal government's attempt to decide who gets to vote," Sooknanan wrote in a 78-page decision.
The judge found the department understated the risk of wrongly removing eligible citizens, saying the database may contain outdated records and misidentify naturalized citizens, and noted that Congress left voter eligibility to the states. The plaintiffs include U.S. citizens whose registrations had been canceled. The Justice Department said it was reviewing the ruling.
President Donald Trump had directed the department to crack down on voting by ineligible people; research shows voter fraud is rare. The department demanded voter rolls from nearly every state, and 18 mostly Republican-led states complied, according to Reuters. Its lawsuits against 26 states that refused have been dismissed. An American Civil Liberties Union lawyer said the ruling made clear the administration could not use the federal government to disrupt elections. The ruling may have limited practical effect before the Nov. 3 midterm elections, as federal law bars systematic voter roll purges within 90 days of a federal election.