Federal Judge Bars the Justice Department From Threatening Election Officials Over Ballots
A federal judge in California has temporarily barred the Justice Department from threatening state and local election officials with prosecution over ballots the administration says may belong to noncitizens — three days before the midterms, as Duval County heads into its final day of early voting.
A federal judge has temporarily blocked the Justice Department from threatening state and local election officials with criminal prosecution if they do not follow federal demands on how ballots are processed, in a ruling issued Friday and reported across the wire on Saturday. U.S. District Judge Trina Thompson, in the Northern District of California, wrote that the defendants “shall not threaten, intimidate or coerce state or local elections officials or workers to demand that they halt processing the ballots of any registered voter solely on the basis that the ballot belongs to an individual alleged by Defendants to be ineligible to vote.”
The temporary restraining order, brought by labor unions and civil-rights groups against the Justice Department and the Department of Homeland Security, also bars the administration from demanding that officials remove specific registered voters from the rolls, refuse ballots to specific voters, or segregate ballots based on federal lists of people alleged to be noncitizens. Thompson ordered the Justice Department to contact officials who had received warnings and tell them the demands and prosecution threats have been enjoined. The order runs through November 16, with a further hearing set for November 13.
Friday's ruling was the second courtroom setback for the administration's California ballot push in three days. On Wednesday, another federal judge rejected the Justice Department's effort to have California set aside the ballots of more than 20,000 voters the department said might not be citizens — and on Friday the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals declined to overturn that decision, writing that there is “no feasible way to identify and segregate the ballots of specific individuals without potentially catastrophic effects on the entire system.”
The rulings land as voting is already underway nationwide for the November 3 midterms, which decide all 435 House seats and 35 Senate seats. In Duval County, early voting runs its final day on Sunday before Election Day on Tuesday, when polls are open 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. — and the orders mean the election workers staffing those sites do their jobs under state and federal election law, not under a federal prosecution threat tied to a list from Washington.
