A federal judge in Boston on Thursday blocked parts of President Trump's executive order to limit voting by mail.
U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani, an Obama nominee, said the Trump administration cannot take any steps to implement two provisions that would require the Department of Homeland Security to compile lists of eligible voters and direct the U.S. Postal Service to send absentee ballots only to people on federally prepared lists.
Talwani sided with twenty-three states and the District of Columbia, which sued to block the order, and wrote that, "It is clear that the federal agencies charged with compiling Confirmed Citizen Lists lack the ability to create complete and accurate lists of the U.S. citizens residing in every state." She added that "Both Congress and the president lack any role regarding voter eligibility."
The order, signed in March, required Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin to compile a list of U.S. citizens eligible to vote in each state using data from the Social Security Administration and also directed the attorney general to "prioritize the investigation and, as appropriate, the prosecution of state and local officials" who conduct elections without using the government-approved list.
Postal Service officials issued a public notice of rule-making that would require state election officials to submit a voter manifest with names, addresses and individual barcode identifiers to a USPS portal at least 30 days before an election, and would have USPS verify outgoing mail-in ballots against that federal database, rejecting ballots not found or lacking the mandated serialization; Postmaster General David Steiner told lawmakers that under the proposal, "the Postal Service would not deliver the mail ballots of any states that refuse to turn over their absentee voter lists to the federal government."
Talwani's injunction said it "does not bar the federal government from providing assistance with verifying the citizenship or eligibility of any voter if the assistance is provided at the request of any State and within the framework provided by Congress," and it blocks "taking any steps to create a new federal program to superintend and control Plaintiff States' maintenance of their voter rolls; or initiating any investigation or prosecution of Plaintiff States, their officials, local officials, or agents of such state or local officials involved in the administration of federal elections within Plaintiff States."
The Trump administration is expected to appeal Talwani's ruling, and plaintiffs have appealed a separate ruling by U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols in Washington, D.C., to the U.S. Appeals Court for the District of Columbia.