A federal judge on Thursday froze major parts of an executive order by President Donald Trump aimed at cracking down on mail voting, blocking the administration from taking further steps to implement it as it would affect two-dozen states that challenged the directives in court.
Background
US District Judge Indira Talwani, an Obama appointee who sits in Boston, is the latest judge to push back on Trump’s broader efforts to insert the federal government into election administration, a task largely designated by the Constitution to the states.
“The Constitution does not grant the President any specific powers over elections,” she wrote.
The order partially halts a Trump directive that would have imposed new requirements on states’ mail voting programs in order for the US Postal Service to deliver the ballots. USPS cannot carry out its plan for the new regulations in the 23 Democratic-led states and the District of Columbia.
The order also blocks for those states Trump’s order that Department of Homeland Security create lists of each state’s voting-age citizens ahead of the election. She explicitly halted the administration from “taking any steps to create a new federal program to superintend and control Plaintiff States’ maintenance of their voter rolls,” or bringing prosecutions against election officials in those states based on the executive order’s instructions
Original reporting: KEYT (Ventura/Santa Barbara) — read the source article.
