Judge Orders the Justice Department to Stop Threatening Election Officials Days Before the Midterms
A federal judge's temporary restraining order bars the administration from demanding that officials remove voters, refuse ballots or set ballots aside based on its list of alleged non-citizen voters - and from threatening the officials who run the elections, New Jersey's county workers included, with prosecution.
A federal judge has ordered the Justice Department to stop threatening to prosecute state and local election officials who do not comply with the Trump administration's demands related to voting by alleged non-citizens, Reuters reported. U.S. District Judge Trina Thompson ruled on Friday, in a lawsuit brought by election workers' unions and other groups, that the department went too far this month when it threatened prosecution against officials who do not cooperate with its election-related initiatives. The Justice Department had no immediate comment on the ruling, Reuters reported.
The order is specific about what the administration may not demand in the remaining days of this election: that local election officials remove voters from statewide rolls, refuse ballots to specific voters, or segregate ballots cast in the midterm elections, based on a Trump administration list of alleged non-citizen voters. In her temporary restraining order, as quoted in the Reuters report, Thompson wrote that 'the public has a paramount interest in ensuring that election officials and workers are able to carry out their work in accordance with federal law and election procedure,' with Election Day only a couple of days away.
The ruling lands on election offices in every state. The Justice Department this week sent letters to election officials in all 50 states threatening potential prosecution if they failed to preserve election records, according to coverage of the case read by this desk, and the plaintiffs include unions representing election workers alongside civil-rights organizations. The temporary order remains in effect until 5 p.m. on November 16 unless the court modifies it. In New Jersey, where county officials and poll workers are running the final day of early voting today and Election Day on Tuesday, the practical effect is the one the judge described: ballots are processed under state and federal election law, and the federal demands the order blocks do not change how a New Jersey ballot is handled.
