
The injunction prohibits the Departments of Justice and Homeland Security from interfering in local election procedures
A federal judge in Washington has blocked attempts by the US administration to force election officials to segregate the ballots of voters suspected of being non-citizens, considering that the measure lacks legal authority and violates privacy laws.
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The Trump administration seeks to impose strict checks on voters' citizenship by interfering in state-run electoral processes.
A federal judge in Washington, D.C., has blocked efforts by the Departments of Justice and Homeland Security to send election officials lists of "suspected noncitizens" and require them to sequester the ballots of those voters for further investigation. The US administration followed this procedure last month in the states of California and Washington.
The injunction, issued late Monday evening by Federal Judge Tanya Chutkan, states that the administration may have violated federal privacy laws by disclosing voter data and lacked the legal authority to distribute these lists. Chutkan was appointed to her position during the presidency of Barack Obama.
The ruling, issued hours before the start of the midterm elections in the United States, represents the latest legal setback to the Trump administration’s pressure campaign on states to adopt more stringent procedures to verify the citizenship of voters, even with the elections already underway, and to involve the federal government in the electoral processes administered by the states.
Local elections officials and election experts said that federal databases may mistakenly include eligible US citizens to vote on lists of suspected non-citizens, because Department of Homeland Security officials compared federal data with state voter records, which are outdated and incomplete, which could lead to inaccurate results.
Courts had halted a lawsuit brought by the Department of Justice, demanding the isolation of ballots in California cast by people whose names appeared on a list prepared by the Trump administration that included 20,000 people suspected of being non-citizens. US President Donald Trump escalated the case to the Supreme Court on Monday, which quickly rejected the administration’s efforts.
In a separate case, a federal judge restricted the ability of the Departments of Justice and Homeland Security to require election officials in any state to segregate ballots, expunge the names of voters from election records, or stop processing ballots. Another judge also barred the administration from asking election officials to change their procedures, or threatening them with prosecution.

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