US Federal Judge Rules Justice Department's Use of Immigration Database to Interfere in Elections Illegal

According to Al Jazeera, US District Judge Sparkle Sooknanan ruled on October 9 that the Justice Department's practice of cross-referencing state voter rolls with the federal immigration database SAVE and subsequently tagging so-called "ineligible voters" is illegal — yet another example of an executive branch effort to expand election oversight being rejected by the courts.

The 78-page ruling backed the claims of the watchdog group Common Cause, finding that Congress had reserved the power to determine voter eligibility to the states, not the federal executive branch. The judge also warned that the executive branch had minimized the risks posed by outdated citizenship records in the SAVE ("Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements") database — stale data that could wrongly tag naturalized US citizens as noncitizens and strip them from the voter rolls.

"The challenged policy represents an attempt by the federal government to determine who may vote," Sooknanan wrote. "Congress has left this power to the states."

According to Al Jazeera, this is the latest in a string of setbacks for the Trump administration's efforts to expand federal involvement in election administration, coming as Republicans scramble to hold on to congressional control in the midterm elections. Last year, Trump directed the Justice Department to crack down on so-called "ineligible voting," despite research showing that electoral fraud is exceedingly rare in the United States. The Justice Department subsequently requested unredacted voter rolls from nearly 50 states — rolls containing sensitive personal information.

Eighteen states led by Republicans complied with the request, after which the Justice Department cross-referenced their voter data with the SAVE database, tagging individuals identified as "noncitizens" for removal from the rolls. Another 30 states that refused to hand over the data, along with Washington, DC, were sued by the Justice Department; 26 of those suits have been dismissed.

ACLU Voting Rights Project senior staff attorney Ming Cheng said in a statement that the ruling makes clear the executive branch cannot use the federal government to undermine elections or place voters' rights at risk. "The Trump administration has repeatedly taken extreme measures to interfere with how elections are run, to undermine confidence in election results, and to create chaos," Cheng said.

Still, the practical effect of the ruling remains in question. Federal law prohibits systematic voter roll purges within 90 days of a federal election, and the next Election Day — November 3 — already falls within that prohibition window. Meanwhile, the Supreme Court last month temporarily stayed Sooknanan's June injunction against the expanded use of the SAVE database, and the final outcome has yet to be determined. The Justice Department said it is reviewing the ruling and has not yet announced whether it will appeal or what its next steps will be.