Judge blocks Trump administration's 'haphazard' voter-screening database
A federal judge on Monday blocked a Trump administration voter-screening database, ruling that the government's "haphazard" system unlawfully consolidated "the private information of millions of Americans" in an effort to purge non-citizens from voter rolls.
In her order, U.S. District Judge Sparkle Sooknanan said the federal government "has knowingly trampled on the privacy rights of American citizens in a manner that threatens the sacred right to vote."
The plaintiffs, including the League of Women Voters, sued the Department of Homeland Security in March over its expansion of the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlement database, accusing the federal government of constructing illegal voter surveillance.
The group previously said in a statement that multiple federal agencies created "comprehensive databases of American citizens' personal data."
Judge Sooknanan on Monday wrote that the administration's actions violated the Social Security Act, the Privacy Act, and the Administrative Procedure Act.
The judge said that government agencies "were scrambling to comply with an Executive Order aimed at reshaping federal elections, which directed them to create a system for mass voter verification."
"Since then, states have partnered with the federal government to access the database and are actively removing United States citizens from voter rolls based on inaccurate information," Sooknanan said.
James Percival, the Department of Homeland Security's general counsel, said in a statement following the judge's order, "It's amazing how hard the Left will fight to stop us from solving problems they insist do not exist."
"Judge Sparkle Sooknanan's latest ruling preventing DHS from addressing alien voting is just the latest example!" Percival said.
