A federal judge on Friday ordered the Justice Department to stop threatening state and local election officials with criminal prosecution over their handling of voter qualification disputes.
U.S. District Judge Trina Thompson also ordered the Trump administration to stop requiring election officials to remove voters from statewide voter rolls, refuse to distribute ballots to specific voters or separate ballots cast midterms, based on the administration’s claims that some voters are ineligible.
“Because the public has a paramount interest in ensuring that election officials and workers are able to perform their jobs in accordance with federal law and election procedure, and because official Election Day is only days away, the balance of actions and the public interest weigh in favor of plaintiffs,” Thompson wrote.
Thompson, a Biden appointee and based in San Francisco, issued a temporary restraining order as part of a lawsuit filed by the Service Employees International Union and other groups. Its directive also requires the DOJ to contact any state or local officials who have received warnings about possible lawsuits and inform them that “demands and threats of lawsuits against election officials and workers…have been prohibited.”
The Justice Department sent letters to election officials in all 50 states Thursday, hinting at possible lawsuits if they don’t preserve election records. The DOJ did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the judge’s overall ruling.
Thompson’s order puts into practice a stark warning issued to the Trump administration by another California-based federal judge, David Carter, earlier this week. “These threats must stop,” Carter wrote in a ruling that rejected the Justice Department’s effort to compel California to void all ballots cast by up to 20,000 people who federal authorities had identified as likely noncitizens. The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals on Friday refused to overturn Carter’s order.
Thompson’s new directive also follows an order from U.S. District Judge James Boasberg, head of the federal district court in Washington, D.C., requiring the Trump administration to provide a list of those 20,000 purported non-citizens to an immigrant advocacy group. Boasberg’s order was based in part on the group’s assertion that threats from the Trump administration were influencing the conduct of state and local elected officials.
Gn usa
