US federal judge bars Trump administration from threatening state election officials

With the US midterm elections approaching, a federal district judge has barred the Trump administration from pressuring election officials to stop alleged non-citizens from voting, and from threatening officials with criminal prosecution.

Trina Thompson, a judge in the US District Court for the Northern District of California, issued a sweeping temporary injunction on Friday (30 October), barring the Justice Department and the Department of Homeland Security from demanding that state and local election officials remove specific voters from electoral registers because the federal government questions their eligibility.

The two departments are also barred from demanding that election officials withhold ballot papers from these voters, refuse to count their ballots, or segregate them.

The lawsuit was jointly brought by several trade unions and civil rights groups, which accused the Justice Department and the Department of Homeland Security of violating election law and infringing states’ constitutional authority to administer elections.

The Department of Homeland Security has sought to cross-check state registers of electors against federal records, but election officials have questioned the reliability of the authorities’ lists of suspected non-citizens.

Thompson said in the temporary injunction: “Although Defendants (the Justice Department and the Department of Homeland Security) claim that their actions are designed to halt unlawful voting by non-citizens, their actions are likely to have the effect of interfering with election administration and disenfranchising lawful voters.”

The temporary injunction also ordered that Justice Department officials “shall not threaten state or local election officials and workers with criminal prosecution for failure to comply”. Thompson said the threats were both contrary to law and “arbitrary and capricious”.

The US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit on Friday also rejected the Justice Department’s request to stop California election officials from counting more than 20,000 postal ballots cast by suspected non-citizens.

The judges said in their ruling that the federal government’s list might not be entirely reliable: “There is a material risk that granting the US its requested relief would result in disenfranchisement of eligible voters.”

Voting in the US midterm elections will take place next Tuesday (3 November), and both major parties are stepping up efforts to get voters to the polls.

Michael Heyman, the US attorney for Alaska, said on Friday that the Trump administration had stepped up its investigation into allegations that Democrats recruited a candidate with the same name as Alaska’s incumbent Republican Senator Dan S. Sullivan to split his vote.

Besides Democrat Mary Peltola, Sullivan faces an independent challenger with the same first name and surname, Daniel J. Sullivan Jr. According to The New York Times, staff working for Peltola and the Democratic Party’s Senate campaign arm helped recruit the retired teacher to run.

It is not uncommon in the US for either major party to support lesser-known third-party candidates to split their opponents’ vote.

Alaska is seen as one of the key states that will determine control of the Senate. The Justice Department has sued Alaska, seeking to block certification of its election results if the Republican Sullivan loses. The department has also asked Alaska to preserve ballots “potentially affected by voter confusion”.

With the midterm campaign in its final stretch, Donald Trump announced on Thursday (29 October) that he was cancelling two weekend campaign rallies in Kansas and Iowa, prompting speculation about his health. But he changed his mind the following day, reinstating both events.

Trump told reporters at the White House on Friday that Republicans in both states had asked him to attend the rallies in person, believing this would be more effective than holding them online.

He also sought to temper expectations for the election results, saying that presidents, whether Republican or Democratic, usually lose midterm elections regardless of how well or badly they perform. Still, he believed Republicans had a chance of doing well.