A federal judge in Washington warned this afternoon that the Trump administration’s efforts to intervene in elections could have a “chilling effect,” noting that letters the Justice Department has sent to local election officials have included inaccurate data.
“The government has made no secret of their determination to purge the voter rolls” of individuals they believe to be noncitizens, U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan said during a rare Saturday hearing. “Past efforts to do so have resulted in U.S. citizens being swept up into this law enforcement dragnet.”
Chutkan said she was concerned people may not go to the polls if they’re afraid they could be wrongly accused of noncitizen voting.
“It’s an ‘if,’” Elizabeth Shapiro, an attorney for the Justice Department, shot back.
“It’s not,” Chutkan said, citing Gustavo Gutierrez Gomez, who filed a declaration in the case, brought by voting advocates over what they call the Trump administration’s “Voter Data Collection Policy.”
The League of United Latin American Citizens, a Hispanic civil rights and advocacy organization, asked the judge to block the transmission of data about registered voters the administration claims are “likely noncitizens” to states and localities for the purpose of taking special action with those voters.
At today’s hearing, Chutkan pointed to several cases in Washington, D.C., and around the country where voting groups or immigrant rights groups are asking for similar relief, noting that Trump administration doesn’t have a stellar track record of identifying actual noncitizen voters.
“The government’s been wrong,” Chutkan said. “In fact, they’ve very rarely been right.”
The judge noted the DOJ’s efforts in Nevada to alert local election officials of 15,903 people it argued were noncitizen voters. There, officials ultimately confirmed that no one on the list was a noncitizen.
“I cannot disagree with you the government has made mistakes,” Shapiro said. “The government is not trying to make mistakes.”
John B. Hill, an attorney representing LULAC, cited reporting from NBC News that the Justice Department is considering bringing litigation against more states in the lead-up to — or possibly after — the Nov. 3 midterm elections as part of its effort to compel states to comb through voter rolls for noncitizens trying to vote in federal elections.
Chutkan is expected to rule on the issue in the coming days.
Today’s hearing follows a separate ruling yesterday from a federal judge in California to block the Trump administration from threatening or intimidating election officials. That ruling was just the latest of several legal setbacks for the Trump administration this week as it attempts to pressure local election officials to comply with its demands ahead of Tuesday’s elections.
