Judge says justice department policy of checking state voter rolls against a federal immigration database is unlawful
A federal judge ruled on Friday that the US justice department’s policy of collecting states’ unredacted voter rolls to check them against a federal immigration database is unlawful.
The ruling, by the US district judge Sparkle Sooknanan, was a setback for Donald Trump, who has pushed his administration to ramp up investigations into non-citizen voting ahead of the November midterm elections, with control of Congress at stake.
The department’s list maintenance policy, adopted to comply with the president’s election integrity executive order, violated privacy laws and risked disenfranchising voters, Sooknanan said.
So what penalty will be given for those performing these unlawful activities? Some snippets from the Guardian article:
Sooknanan said the department “improperly” disclosed and maintained records.
In her ruling, she cited two people who had been incorrectly removed from their state’s voter roll list because they had been wrongly identified as non-citizens.
