Activists and clergy members were arrested on Capitol Hill on August 3, after staging a protest inside Senate Majority Leader John Thune's office to oppose the war in Iran and advocate for voting rights. The demonstration, led by Bishop William J. Barber II and the Repairers of the Breach organization, was part of the group's "100 Days of Action" campaign ahead of the November midterm elections. Protesters sought to voice their opposition to the SAVE America Act, arguing it would suppress voter access.
The Trump administration's streak of courtroom losses in its effort to obtain state voter rolls reached 21 this year when a judge ruled Thursday that states are not required to share the records with the federal government.
With President Donald Trump's Republicans defending slim majorities in both chambers of Congress, his administration has mounted an aggressive effort to expand federal oversight of elections ahead of the Nov. 3 midterms.
Trump claims widespread noncitizen voting is benefiting the Democratic Party, but state audits and independent studies found noncitizen voting to be rare.
A Reuters investigation found just 129 people have been prosecuted for noncitizen voting since a law criminalizing it was passed in 1996, and that most of those cases stemmed from voter confusion or miscommunication with election officials rather than a conspiracy.
People are also reading…
Attendees hold signs advocating for voting rights and against the SAVE America Act at a rally outside the U.S. Capitol on March 18 in Washington, D.C.
Repeatedly judges found the U.S. Constitution gives states primary responsibility for running federal elections and that federal voting laws do not require them to hand over the records.
"If the Department disagrees with Congress’s judgment as to the records necessary to carry out its enforcement duties … it needs to lodge that objection with Congress," U.S. District Judge Randolph Moss, an appointee of Democratic President Barack Obama, wrote Thursday in dismissing a Justice Department bid to obtain unredacted voter rolls from Washington, D.C.
The Justice Department sued more than two dozen states that refused to comply with its requests to turn over voter rolls containing information including birthdays and partial Social Security numbers.
The administration paired its court campaign with threats to withhold some disaster funds from states that don’t use a federal system for verifying voters' citizenship, and sought to restrict who can receive mail ballots.
Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Harmeet Dhillon said in a statement Monday: "Ensuring that only eligible citizens vote is a core function of government, and states have an obligation to maintain accurate voter rolls."
Shanté Piché, center, and Christian Ott, right, cast votes Thursday in general primary voting with their dog, Ryman, at Robert Churchwell Elementary School in Nashville, Tenn.
DOJ appeals
The Justice Department's 21 losses since January came from federal judges across the country appointed by presidents of both major parties, including Democratic-governed states such as California and Republican-led ones such as West Virginia.
It could still prevail in any of nine similar cases pending.
The department appealed 16 losses. It lost one appeal; on June 24, a three-judge panel of the Cincinnati-based 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the dismissal of the department's lawsuit against Michigan. The department asked all the court's active judges to hear the case.
It could also ask the U.S. Supreme Court, where conservative justices hold a 6-3 majority, to consider cases it loses on appeal, though there would be no guarantee the court would take up any case.
The administration has taken further steps that voting-rights groups and Democrats describe as coercive.
In early July, Dhillon sent letters to election officials in all 50 states warning they could face criminal charges if they knowingly allowed non-U.S. citizens to remain on their voter rolls.
Last month, the Department of Homeland Security said it would withhold some disaster relief funds from states that do not run voter rolls through the federal immigration database SAVE.
Separately, the Justice Department asked the Supreme Court to let it enforce an executive order requiring DHS to compile lists of U.S. citizens eligible to vote in each state and limiting mail ballots to voters on those lists. A federal judge blocked the order in several states, saying federal agencies lack the ability to accurately compile such lists. The court has yet to rule.
Stanley Know, 70, right, stops in to say hello to friends July 28 during early voting at Midtown Center in Milwaukee.
‘Fishing expedition’
Justice Department lawyers said in court filings and hearings that the department plans to compare states' voter lists with SAVE to identify non-U.S. citizens registered to vote.
Democrats and voting rights groups say SAVE's information on whether someone is a U.S. citizen can be unreliable.
In a June 27 order denying the administration's bid to obtain Pennsylvania's voter list, Pittsburgh-based U.S. District Judge Cathy Bissoon, an Obama appointee, said the federal government was on a "fishing expedition" to "advance unsubstantiated claims of non-citizen voting."
The Justice Department appealed Bissoon's ruling to the Philadelphia-based 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which has yet to schedule a hearing for the case.
Lis Frost, an elections lawyer with Elias Law Group, said the administration could point to its inability to obtain several states' voter rolls to try to undermine public confidence and lay the rhetorical groundwork to challenge Republican losses in the midterms.
"They’ll make up lies about made-up suspicions about the voter rolls," said Frost, whose firm frequently represents the Democratic Party in court.
