A voter leaves a polling place in Minnesota on Election Day. (File photo — Image: Lorie Shaull / Wikimedia Commons — CC BY 2.0)
National Democrats sued President Donald Trump and the Justice Department on Tuesday, asking a federal court to block the administration from threatening state election officials with criminal prosecution and from pressuring states to remove registered voters from the rolls weeks before the midterm elections.
The lawsuit, filed in the US District Court for the District of Columbia, was brought by the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, the Democratic Governors Association, and the Nevada State Democratic Party, alongside Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer, House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries, and a California voter who is a naturalized citizen. The defendants include Trump, Attorney General Todd Blanche, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, the Justice Department, and the Department of Homeland Security.
The plaintiffs say the administration is engaged in an "effort to unlawfully federalize elections," and that its threats — including Trump's warning that California election officials would "go to jail for a long period of time" if they counted ballots the administration has flagged — intimidate and coerce the officials who run America's elections, as well as lawful voters, particularly naturalized citizens. They allege the conduct violates Section 11(b) of the Voting Rights Act and the US Constitution, and they ask the court to bar the administration from threatening officials and from directing states to remove voters from the rolls, withhold their ballots, or refuse to count ballots they have cast.
The suit lands a week after the Justice Department sued California and Los Angeles County, when officials there refused to set aside about 20,000 voters' ballots based on administration claims that the voters were noncitizens. Democrats argue those claims rest on federal data with a long record of inaccuracy, and the complaint describes demands that states segregate tens of thousands of mail-in ballots until citizenship can be verified as based on "shoddy" federal data.
Election administration in the United States has traditionally been run by the states, and Trump has repeatedly called on Republicans to "nationalize the voting." With Election Day on November 3 now less than two weeks away, the case sets up an urgent court fight over how far the federal government can go in pressing states over who gets to vote — and whose ballots get counted.
It is the second major election lawsuit Democrats have filed this cycle, following an earlier case seeking to bar armed federal agents from polling places during the midterms.
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