Judge permanently blocks Trump EO requiring proof of citizenship to vote
The judge ruled that the president lacks the authority to oversee elections.
A federal judge on Wednesday permanently blocked the Trump administration from enforcing an executive order signed last year that required proof of citizenship to register to vote and demanded mail-in ballots be received by Election Day.
Judge Denise Casper ruled that the president lacks the authority to oversee elections and rejected the Trump administration's unsupported claims of "widespread illegal voting, discrimination, fraud, and other forms of malfeasance and error."
"While the Constitution vests the President with 'executive Power' and commands him to 'take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed,' it does not grant the President any specific powers over elections," Judge Casper wrote.
The decision is more than a year in the making, with a group of state attorneys general last April filing a lawsuit in Boston to block Trump's first executive order on voting. That order sought to require proof of citizenship to register to vote as well as impose an Election Day deadline for mail-in ballots, and Judge Casper last June issued a preliminary injunction blocking the policy.
In a 59-page ruling issued Wednesday, Judge Casper made that decision permanent on largely the same legal basis as her decision last year. In addition to finding that Trump overstepped his authority with the order, the judge said the Department of Justice failed to demonstrate the alleged fraud that purportedly justified the order, and the policy would have disenfranchised thousands.
"There is no evidence in this record of widespread 'illegal voting, discrimination, fraud, and other forms of malfeasance and error' within American elections, which the Executive Order purports to safeguard against," she wrote.
The ruling is the latest setback in the Trump administration's attempt to reshape federal elections, with courts blocking multiple efforts to impose federal oversight on elections.
Multiple lawsuits are challenging Trump’s second executive order on voting that attempted to create a national database of approved voters, and earlier this week, a judge blocked an attempt to use an immigration database to check voter rolls. Judges across the country have also rejected the Department of Justice's attempt to obtain state voter rolls.