Trump Administration’s Courtroom Battles Over Election Control
The Trump administration has launched a series of legal challenges aimed at reshaping election oversight, but federal courts are pushing back. In California, the Justice Department sought an order compelling the state to turn over its voter registration list, arguing that it was necessary to verify eligibility. California officials countered that they already have robust procedures for verifying voter eligibility and challenging ballots, and that the federal government’s list is unreliable. A federal court agreed with California, with the majority stating that federal officials had not established that the law and facts “clearly favor” their position—the heightened standard required because the government was seeking an order compelling California to take affirmative action during an ongoing election. The ruling underscores the judiciary’s reluctance to intervene in election procedures at the eleventh hour.nnThe administration’s legal strategy has also faced skepticism in other states. In Rhode Island, a demand for voter data was criticized for lacking any factual allegations suggesting that the state may be violating the list maintenance requirements of the National Voter Registration Act of 1993, the Help America Vote Act of 2002, or the Civil Rights Act of 1960. A Maine federal judge appointed by Trump highlighted how such demands ignore Congress’s decisions, noting that construing the Civil Rights Act of 1960—enacted as strong medicine to address the stubborn ill of racial discrimination in voting booths across the Jim Crow South—to implicitly provide the United States a right to every state’s Statewide Voter Registration List would take a sledgehammer to the balance Congress struck when it required states to create and maintain computerized lists of registered voters in the first place. These rebukes suggest that the administration’s attempts to use federal power to access voter data are on shaky legal ground.nnThe Supreme Court has had a mixed record this year in responding to the administration’s attempts to meddle in elections. While the Court maintained a federal district court order blocking a USPS rule on mail voting, it recently overturned another court order that would have temporarily blocked the administration’s efforts to use the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) program, an error-prone program that could lead to eligible citizens being blocked from voting. This inconsistency has left state officials concerned about election meddling by the Trump administration next week, as evidenced
Shimanta Das 
