A federal judge on Thursday handed President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans a significant legal victory, allowing the administration’s executive order tightening rules around mail-in voting to remain in place while legal challenges continue.
The March executive order, one of several election-related actions pushed by Trump ahead of the midterm cycle, seeks to strengthen safeguards surrounding mail-in ballots by directing federal agencies to coordinate citizenship data in order to help states maintain accurate voter rolls. The order would also require the U.S. Postal Service to deliver mail-in ballots only to individuals listed on each state’s approved voter registration rolls.
Democrats and left-leaning advocacy groups quickly moved to block the order in court. The lawsuit was brought by the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee along with the NAACP and the League of United Latin American Citizens, who argued the administration was overstepping federal authority and risking voter disenfranchisement.
But U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols appeared unconvinced by those arguments.
In his ruling, Nichols said the plaintiffs were unlikely to succeed on the merits of the case and described many of their claims as speculative and built on uncertain assumptions rather than concrete evidence.
One major argument raised by the challengers centered on the Privacy Act. Plaintiffs claimed the federal government could violate privacy protections by compiling a list of citizens over the age of 18 using existing federal data in an effort to identify eligible voters, even if that information never gets transmitted to states.
Nichols rejected much of that reasoning, saying the argument would only apply if a “purely intra-federal government list is created.”
The judge further stated that the plaintiffs failed to demonstrate how sharing already-known information such as names, ages, and residences among federal agencies would cause enough legal harm to justify blocking the order.
The ruling also pushed back on another key Democrat argument — that Democratic voters would somehow be more likely than Republicans to be mistakenly excluded from citizenship-based voter lists, potentially burdening their ability to cast ballots.
Nichols said those concerns rested on what he described as “a highly attenuated chain of possibilities,” signaling skepticism toward claims that broad voter suppression would result from the order.
The decision arrives as Trump and Republican lawmakers continue making election integrity a centerpiece issue heading into the next congressional battles. Trump has also urged Congress to pass the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act, legislation that would require proof of citizenship to register to vote before the upcoming midterm elections.
Supporters of tighter election rules argue such measures are necessary to restore public confidence in elections after years of disputes over voting procedures and ballot security. Critics, meanwhile, warn that increasing federal involvement in election systems could eventually create new bureaucratic complications and deepen already fierce political divisions over how Americans vote.
Another legal battle is already looming. Next week, U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani, an appointee of former President Barack Obama, is scheduled to hear arguments in Boston in a separate case brought by Democratic-led states challenging Trump’s mail-in ballot restrictions, according to Reuters.
The debate has also carried a note of political irony. Earlier this year, Trump himself voted by mail in Florida’s special election, even as his administration continues pushing for tighter oversight of mail-in voting nationwide.
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