US Judge Rules Against Justice Department's Use of Voter Data

A federal judge ruled that the Justice Department unlawfully sought state voter rolls to cross-check against a federal immigration database to identify voters considered ineligible. US District Judge Sparkle Sooknanan issued the decision on Friday, which is seen as a setback for the Trump administration's efforts to increase federal oversight of elections ahead of the midterms. In her 78-page ruling, Sooknanan sided with the watchdog group Common Cause, stating that the administration had downplayed the risk of erroneously removing eligible citizens from voter rolls due to inaccuracies in the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) database. "The challenged policy represents the federal government’s attempt to decide who gets to vote," Sooknanan wrote, emphasizing that Congress had assigned that authority to the states. The Justice Department announced it was reviewing the ruling. Ming Cheung, a senior staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union’s Voting Rights Project, commented that the ruling clarified that the administration could not use federal resources to disrupt elections or jeopardize voters' rights. Last year, Trump directed the department to address voting by ineligible individuals, despite evidence indicating that voter fraud is rare. The department subsequently requested unredacted voter rolls from nearly all 50 states, including sensitive personal information. Eighteen states, primarily led by Republicans, complied, allowing the department to cross-check their data against SAVE and flagging individuals identified as noncitizens for potential removal from voter rolls. Sooknanan noted that the database might contain outdated citizenship records, which could lead to misidentifying naturalized US citizens. The department has also filed lawsuits against 30 states and Washington, DC, for their refusal to provide voter data, with 26 cases dismissed. In a separate case in June, Sooknanan blocked the expanded use of the SAVE database for voter roll checks, an order that the US Supreme Court temporarily paused last month. Federal law prohibits systematic voter roll purges within 90 days before a federal election, which may limit the ruling's practical impact before the November 3 vote.