Judge Blocks DOJ From Threatening Election Workers Days Before the Midterms
A federal judge in California has barred the Justice Department and Homeland Security from threatening election officials with prosecution for counting ballots as state and federal law require - an emergency order that covers election workers in every state, including Harris County, through November 16.
Three days before Election Day, a federal judge has drawn a line around the people who run America's elections. U.S. District Judge Trina Thompson in San Francisco on Friday barred the Justice Department and the Department of Homeland Security from threatening state and local election officials with criminal prosecution for refusing administration demands tied to voters the government alleges are ineligible, Reuters reported.
The temporary restraining order, in a suit brought by election workers' unions and civil-rights groups including SEIU, AFSCME, LULAC and the NAACP, also forbids the agencies from demanding that officials purge specific voters from the rolls, refuse them ballots, or set their ballots aside based only on the administration's claim that those voters are ineligible, CNN reported. Thompson wrote that workers who process and count ballots the way state and federal law require "do not violate federal criminal law," even when a ballot belongs to someone the government has accused of being ineligible.
"Because the public has a paramount interest in ensuring that election officials and workers are able to carry out their work in accordance with federal law and election procedure, and the official day of the Elections is only a couple of days away, the balance of the equities and public interest weigh in Plaintiffs' favor," Thompson wrote, according to Reuters. The Justice Department had no immediate comment on the ruling, Reuters said. The order also requires the administration to disclose pending search-warrant applications, grand jury subpoenas and other demands for election materials tied to its voter lists, and to tell officials who received the earlier demands that those demands are now enjoined, CNN reported.
For Houston, the ruling lands on the people who will staff Harris County's vote centers on Tuesday and count its ballots afterward: the order applies in every state while it is in effect, and it is set to expire November 16, after the November 3 midterms that will decide control of Congress. The ruling follows the Justice Department's push this month over alleged noncitizen voters - the same campaign that produced the appeals-court fight over 20,000 California mail ballots this station covered earlier in the week.
