Judge Denies Trump Request to Interfere with Absentee Ballots While Case Against His EO Plays Out

A federal judge denied the Trump administration’s stay request Tuesday and will continue to block key sections of an executive order that would give the federal government unprecedented control of absentee voting.

“That Defendants may have to work harder later, in the event that this court’s order is reversed, does not rise to the level of irreparable injury…” Judge Indira Talwani, an Obama appointee in Massachusetts, wrote of the administration.  

Talwani had previously ruled in a June decision that the administration could not enforce an executive order that required the creation of a federal citizen list and dictated to whom the Postal Service can send absentee ballots.

The administration had mounted various arguments in favor of staying her order during the appeal process, including that it was too difficult for the U.S. Postal Service to implement the executive order just for states that aren’t plaintiffs in the case and that the injunction threatens election security.

As to the first argument, Talwani noted that the USPS has been blocked from implementing the order for any state in a separate challenge to the order playing out in district court in D.C.

In response to the second, she noted that the citizen lists would not enable the administration to prove that non-citizens are voting, a conspiracy theory that has become a mainstay in the Republican Party.

“A state could do nothing more with the list than rely upon it as additional proof of citizenship, but not as proof of noncitizenship,” she wrote. “Indeed, in conceding that the lists are necessarily incomplete, Defendants have acknowledged that a voter’s absence from the lists required by the EO does not signify that voter’s ineligibility.”

The Trump administration almost certainly intends to use the lists to disenfranchise unfriendly voters, should the effort survive these legal challenges. 

Read the ruling here: