Judge allows Trump to implement mail-in voting executive order

NEW YORK – A US judge on May 28 declined to block US President Donald Trump’s executive tightening rules on mail-in voting in a loss for the Democratic Party, whose lawyers argued that it could disenfranchise millions of voters.

The decision comes as Mr Trump’s Republicans are locked in a tight battle to keep control of both houses of the US Congress in the November midterm elections. Mr Trump has for years pushed the false claim that his 2020 election defeat was the result of widespread voter fraud and has criticised voting by mail.

The executive order signed by Mr Trump on March 31 directed his administration to compile a list of confirmed US citizens eligible to vote in each state and to use federal data to help state election officials verify who is eligible to vote.

It also required the US postal service to deliver ballots to only voters on each state’s approved mail-in ballot list, and required states to preserve election-related records for five years.

In urging Washington-based US District Judge Carl Nichols to issue a preliminary injunction blocking the measure, plaintiffs, including Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York, argued that the order infringed on individual states’ rights to regulate elections under the US constitution.

The Democrats argued that the executive order’s direction that agencies use Department of Homeland Security and Social Security Administration data to build “state citizenship lists” risked improperly excluding lawfully registered voters because the data sources can be out of date and may include errors.

The Justice Department countered that the litigation was premature because federal agencies have not yet implemented the executive order.

Mr Nichols had at times appeared sympathetic to that argument during oral arguments on May 14.

A coalition of Democratic states brought a similar lawsuit challenging the executive order in federal court in Boston. REUTERS