WASHINGTON: The Trump administration’s streak of courtroom defeats in its ongoing effort to obtain state voter rolls reached 21 this week after a federal judge ruled that states are not required to share the records with the federal government.
With Republicans defending slim majorities in both chambers of Congress ahead of the November 3 midterms, the administration has mounted an aggressive campaign to expand federal oversight of elections. President Donald Trump argues that widespread noncitizen voting is disproportionately benefiting the Democratic Party, although state audits and independent studies have consistently found such instances to be exceedingly rare.
According to a Reuters investigation, just 129 people have been prosecuted for noncitizen voting since a law criminalizing the act was passed in 1996. The investigation found that the vast majority of those cases stemmed from voter confusion or miscommunication with election officials rather than any coordinated conspiracy.
Judges Push Back on Federal Overreach
Repeatedly, judges have concluded that the U.S. Constitution gives states the primary responsibility for running federal elections, noting that federal voting laws do not mandate them to hand over these records.
Dismissing a Justice Department bid to obtain unredacted voter rolls from Washington, D.C. on Thursday, U.S. District Judge Randolph Moss wrote:
“If the Department disagrees with Congress’s judgment as to the records necessary to carry out its enforcement duties … it needs to lodge that objection with Congress.”
The Justice Department has sued more than two dozen states that have outright refused to comply with requests to turn over comprehensive voter rolls, which contain sensitive information including birthdays and partial Social Security numbers.
In a similar ruling on June 27, Pittsburgh-based U.S. District Judge Cathy Bissoon denied the administration’s bid to obtain Pennsylvania’s voter list, stating that the federal government was on a “fishing expedition” designed to “advance unsubstantiated claims of non-citizen voting”.
Escalating Pressure and Funding Threats
The administration has paired its aggressive courtroom campaign with administrative pressure. Recent actions include threats to withhold specific disaster relief funds from states that refuse to run their voter rolls through the federal immigration database (SAVE) and attempts to restrict who can receive mail ballots.
In early July, Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Harmeet Dhillon sent letters to election officials across all 50 states warning that they could face criminal charges if they knowingly allowed non-U.S. citizens to remain on their voter rolls.
“Ensuring that only eligible citizens vote is a core function of government, and states have an obligation to maintain accurate voter rolls,” Dhillon said in a statement on Monday.
Don Palmer, a senior legal fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation and a former Justice Department elections lawyer, defended the administration’s broad campaign, noting that it reflects the priority placed on identifying noncitizens and sharing that vital information with state governments.
The Appeals Process
The Justice Department’s 21 losses since January have been handed down by federal judges appointed by presidents of both parties, affecting both Democratic-governed states like California and Republican-led ones such as West Virginia.
The department currently has nine similar cases pending and has already appealed 16 of its losses. Recently, the Cincinnati-based 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the dismissal of the department’s lawsuit against Michigan, prompting the DOJ to ask all of the court’s active judges to hear the case.
As the legal battles mount, elections lawyers and voting rights groups suggest the administration is actively laying the rhetorical groundwork to challenge potential Republican losses in the upcoming midterms. A Justice Department spokesperson countered this by pointing to a July 17 Department of Homeland Security finding that over 250,000 “potential noncitizens” were registered to vote across four states, though DHS did not clarify how many were confirmed noncitizens or how many actually voted.
