Top Democratic leaders filed a federal lawsuit seeking to block the Trump administration from taking over state election authority or intimidating state and local election officials, just three weeks before the Nov. 3 midterms. The suit, filed Tuesday in Washington, names President Donald Trump, the Justice Department, Attorney General Todd Blanche, the Department of Homeland Security and DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin as defendants. It asks a court to bar the administration from purging legally registered voters from statewide voter lists and from denying ballots to voters who are legally registered.
According to the Washington Post, the lawsuit alleges the administration is unlawfully interfering with the midterms by pressuring states to remove voters from their rolls. The plaintiffs also want a ruling declaring that the administration illegally threatened state election officials with prosecution ahead of the election, as News4JAX reported, citing Associated Press reporting on the filing. The case was assigned to Chief Judge James Boasberg.
Who Signed On to the Lawsuit
The case was brought on behalf of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, the Democratic Governors Association, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, according to Bloomberg Law. Jeffries spoke about the party's concerns at a news conference at the Capitol on Sept. 30, and Schumer addressed reporters at the Capitol after a closed-door meeting with fellow Democrats.
The suit contends Trump has repeatedly spread misinformation about elections and voter fraud and used it as a pretext to seize control over elections, and it argues courts have overwhelmingly rejected his prior attempts to do so, per the News4JAX report on the AP filing. The complaint points specifically to recent Justice Department actions in California as evidence of the pattern it is trying to stop.
The California Ballot Fight at the Center of the Case
The lawsuit cites the Justice Department's effort to block California election officials from counting mail-in ballots cast by people the federal government identified as likely noncitizens, until their immigration status is confirmed. The U.S. Department of Justice says it sought a court order requiring California to set aside those vote-by-mail ballots and verify the voters' status. Per Democracy Docket, the Justice Department sued California and Los Angeles County after officials there refused to set aside 20,000 ballots based on what the outlet described as unverified claims that the voters were noncitizens.
A similar episode played out in Nevada over the summer, where federal officials' estimates of potentially noncitizen voters shifted dramatically. Democracy Docket reported that DHS claimed as many as 16,000 Nevada voters were potentially noncitizens before narrowing that number to 185; the dossier underlying this account notes other reporting has cited differing initial figures, and no single count has been confirmed. The New York Times reported that Nevada officials said every one of the 185 people ultimately flagged was a lawful citizen, with one official saying, “Every single person on the list was a lawful citizen,” and that the agency had not provided evidence to support its claims.
A Broader Push Over Who Controls Elections
States have traditionally held primary responsibility for running elections, and the Congressional Research Service notes that the Elections Clause of Article I, Section 4, Clause 1 gives states the initial authority to set the times, places and manner of elections. The Nevada Independent described the administration's push to identify noncitizens on voter rolls as an unprecedented level of federal involvement in state-run elections. The New York Times has separately reported that the administration has pursued a broad campaign to find proof of widespread noncitizen voting despite decades of evidence that it is extremely rare.
The Justice Department, in response to the new lawsuit, said election integrity is a top priority for the administration and that its actions are grounded in law and already under court litigation, according to the News4JAX account of the filing.
Other Legal Challenges Already Underway
This is not the only legal fight tied to the administration's election posture heading into Nov. 3. Bloomberg Law reported that voting-rights organizations, unions and the city of Denver have filed related lawsuits in recent weeks raising similar allegations and seeking court intervention to prevent the deployment of armed federal agents to polling places. Those cases, together with the new suit before Chief Judge Boasberg, reflect a widening legal battle over federal versus state control of elections just as midterm voting approaches.
