Judge says Trump voter screening database is illegal

U.S. District Court Judge Sparkle Sooknanan on Monday ruled that a voter-screening database the Trump administration compiled broke the law and violated U.S. citizens’ privacy rights. The database—which President Donald Trump whipped into existence with an executive order last year—compiled information from various federal government agencies into one dataset that state and local officials could use to purge their voter rolls of suspected noncitizen voters. But the database’s existence violated the Administrative Procedure Act, the Social Security Act, and the Privacy Act, Sooknanan said. As a result, she issued a summary judgment blocking the federal government from enforcing the president’s executive order.

How did this matter come before Judge Sooknanan? Several organizations and individuals sued the federal government last fall, arguing the creation of the database violated their rights as U.S. citizens. They also alleged that some of their members who were U.S. citizens were removed from their local voter rolls because the database had them listed as noncitizens. The record put before the court related to this case showed that the federal government agencies responsible for compiling the database knew that it violated federal law, and knew that it contained inaccurate information, Sooknanan said. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s General Counsel, James Percival, said in a statement provided to WORLD on Tuesday that this was the latest example of the left trying to prevent the Trump administration from solving issues that Democrats insisted were not problems.

Has the Trump administration made similar attempts? In March, roughly a year after the initial executive order, President Trump issued another executive order calling for a “State Citizenship List” similar to the one established in the previous executive order, except that it focused primarily on creating stringent rules for mail-in ballots. The Trump administration insists that fraudulent voter registrations and mail-in ballots are serious threats to the integrity of U.S. elections. At least one legal challenge to the second executive order is winding its way through the federal court system.

Dig deeper: Read Joanna Insco’s report about Ohio legislators approving photo ID requirements for mail-in ballots.