Judge blocks Trump’s executive order requiring proof of citizenship to vote

A federal judge issued an injunction Thursday blocking key parts of President Trump’s executive order to tighten voting rules, including provisions requiring people to provide proof of citizenship before registering to vote using a federal form.

Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, a Clinton appointee to the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, said Congress or the Election Assistance Commission could make those decisions and the president could not “unilaterally mandate” it.

Our Constitution entrusts Congress and the states, not the president, with the authority to regulate federal elections,” the judge concluded.

She delivered some victories to Mr. Trump, ruling it was “premature” to challenge other parts of his executive order that punish states for counting ballots received after Election Day.

Mr. Trump’s March 25 executive order, “Preserving and Protecting the Integrity of American Elections,” could be the most considerable change to federal election rules in decades.

It carried out some of Mr. Trump’s primary complaints with elections over the past decade: that noncitizens have flooded voter rolls and that states are abusing Election Day by allowing mail and absentee ballots to be received and counted days after the voting is supposed to end.

“The right of American citizens to have their votes properly counted and tabulated, without illegal dilution, is vital to determining the rightful winner of an election,” the president said in the order.

Immigrant and voting rights groups said the order was the most intense attack on voting rights in decades. They said it chased after an essentially nonexistent issue in noncitizen voting and that discounting ballots after Election Day would disenfranchise many voters.

“This ruling is a resounding victory for democracy and the rule of law,” said Norm Eisen, a former White House ethics official and co-founder of the State Democracy Defenders Fund. “No president can trample the Constitution to impose anti-voter restrictions.”

The biggest battleground was proof of citizenship with the federal voter registration form, a standardized form required by the 1993 National Voter Registration Act, or “Motor-Voter” law.

Government agencies, such as motor vehicle bureaus and Social Security offices, must make the form available to those who use their offices.

Mr. Trump ordered the Election Assistance Commission, which oversees the form, to require proof of citizenship before voter registration is accepted.

He also ordered federal agencies to “assess” citizenship before giving forms to people who appear in their offices.

Judge Kollar-Kotelly said the Constitution gives states the power to determine voter qualifications and gives Congress the power to check that authority in federal elections.

“The Constitution vests none of these powers in the president,” she said.

Major civil liberties and political groups such as the League of United Latin American Citizens, the League of Women Voters, and the Democratic National Committee sued over the executive order.

The case touches on some of Mr. Trump’s most incendiary claims of election malfeasance. In 2016, with scant evidence to back him up, he said he trailed Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton in the popular vote because of noncitizen voting.

In 2020, he blamed changes in pandemic voting rules, including expansions of mail-in, early and absentee voting, for his loss to Joseph R. Biden.

Mr. Trump’s March executive order demanded that federal and state officials attempt to weed out noncitizens from voting rolls.

Among those moves, the Department of Homeland Security was ordered to make the federal government’s central immigration status database available to state officials, free of charge, so that they could run names.

The department said this week that it had accomplished that task.

Mr. Trump directed the Justice Department to work out information-sharing with states to zealously prosecute election crimes.

That wasn’t challenged in the lawsuit.

The president also asked Homeland Security, the White House Department of Government Efficiency and the Justice Department to scour state registration lists to spot ineligible voters and flag them for states to follow up.

Groups challenged those provisions, but Judge Kollar-Kotelly said those issues were “premature or improperly presented.”

She made the same holding for the groups’ challenge to Mr. Trump’s demand that the Justice Department and Election Assistance Commission punish states that allow mail or absentee ballots to be counted if they are cast, but not received, by Election Day.

In a joint statement, the DNC and other Democratic campaign operations said they “fought back using every tool at our disposal.”

“Today’s court victory represents a huge step in the fight to protect our democracy,” they said.