A federal judge has barred the justice department from threatening or coercing election workers to stop processing ballots.
The temporary restraining order issued by the US district judge Trina Thompson in the northern district of California late Friday also bars the justice department from demanding local election officials segregate or not count ballots that the federal government deems may have been illegally cast by immigrants, something that is exceedingly rare.
The order came the day after the justice department sent letters to election officials in all 50 states threatening to prosecute and jail any who failed to preserve ballot records.
The justice department’s “intimidation, threats, and attempts at coercion force election workers daily to choose between acceding to defendants’ unlawful demands or adhering to their duties and thereby subjecting themselves to a serious risk of criminal investigation and prosecution”. Thompson wrote.
The order in the lawsuit filed by labor unions and civil rights groups marks another blow to the Trump administration’s efforts to assert control over local elections.
It comes after a federal appeals court on Friday rejected the justice department’s request for California to set aside disputed ballots received in the midterm election, the latest setback for the Trump administration’s efforts to assert control over state-run elections.
The administration has alleged California sent ballots to about 20,000 people who may not be US citizens. It wants the state to set those ballots aside and not count them until citizenship can be verified. California officials say the list is highly unreliable and most likely includes many people who are US citizens.
A separate ruling from a three-judge panel on Wednesday forcefully denied that request, warning that the justice department’s demands could disenfranchise citizens.
“As the district court found – and we discern no clear error – there is no feasible way to identify and segregate the ballots of specific individuals without potentially catastrophic effects on the entire system,” the ninth circuit court of appeals panel wrote in its 2-1 ruling.
The majority opinion was authored by Judge Mark J. Bennett, who was appointed by President Donald Trump, and Judge Gabriel P. Sanchez, who was appointed by former Ppresident Joe Biden.
A justice department spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the ruling. But in a statement about the sweeping efforts to root out noncitizen voting, it said: “Federal law prohibits noncitizens from voting. Enforcing that law is not an agenda item. It is the Department’s job.”
Two data scientists from the University of California, Los Angeles recently found that more than 40% of the ballots flagged by the Trump administration bear names that are not even found on the state’s voter rolls, according to the Associated Press. The researchers found that the Trump administration flagged thousands of voters as ineligible, despite the fact that their names corresponded with those of US citizens.
Millions of people have already voted in California in the midterm election that concludes on Tuesday. Hundreds of thousands of ballots have already been processed. Elections officials have said that processed votes can’t be matched back to the voters who submitted them.
The top federal prosecutor in Los Angeles, Bill Essayli, has said: “Any election official who knowingly processes the ballot of a noncitizen is opening themselves to legal jeopardy.”