Trump’s anti-voting order may backfire, damaging DOJ’s voter roll campaign
President Donald Trump’s executive order on mail voting is highly likely to be declared unconstitutional and blocked by courts. But it might also screw up the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) 30 ongoing lawsuits for state voter rolls.
Legal experts say the voter suppression diktat may be as strategically foolish as it is doomed.
“The only real legal effect of this executive order might be to kill the remaining DOJ lawsuits seeking to seize voter data,” said David Becker, executive director of the Center for Election Innovation and Research and a former trial attorney in the DOJ’s Voting section.
The executive order Trump signed Tuesday purports to restrict mail-in ballots to just voters on a list of verified U.S. citizens, which would be compiled by the Department of Homeland Security. A coalition of Democrats quickly challenged the order as unconstitutional, and several more lawsuits have since poured in. [Continue reading…]