A federal judge on Friday blocked President Donald Trump’s attempt to overhaul elections in the US, siding with a group of Democratic state attorneys general who challenged the effort as unconstitutional.
According to an AP report, the Republican president's March 25 executive order sought to compel officials to require documentary proof of citizenship for everyone registering to vote for federal elections, accept only mailed ballots received by Election Day and condition federal election grant funding on states adhering to the new ballot deadline.
The group of attorneys general said the directive “usurps the States' constitutional power and seeks to amend election law by fiat”.
The White House has defended the order as “standing up for free, fair and honest elections” and called proof of citizenship a “commonsense” requirement.
The top law enforcement officials from 19 states filed a federal lawsuit after the Republican president signed the executive order in March, arguing that its provisions would step on states' power to set their own election rules and that the executive branch had no such authority. The case tests a constitutional bedrock – the separation of powers.
A filing by a bipartisan group of former secretaries of state said that Trump's directive would upend the system established by the Constitution's Elections Clause, which gives states and Congress control over how elections are run, news agency AP reported.
They said the order seeks to “unilaterally coronate the President as the country's chief election policymaker and administrator”.
If the court does not halt the order, they argued, “the snowball of executive overreach will grow swiftly and exponentially".
This election directive by Trump was part of a bunch of executive orders that he had issued in the opening months of his second term, drawing legal challenges.
Over the years, Trump has repeatedly claimed that his loss to Democrat Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election was due to widespread fraud. Trump and other Republicans had promoted the notion that large number of non-citizens threatened the integrity of US elections, the report said.
In fact, voting by noncitizens is rare and, when caught, can lead to felony charges and deportation.
Donald Trump's executive order would require voters to show proof of US citizenship when registering to vote in federal elections, prohibit mail or absentee ballots from being counted if they are received after Election Day, set new rules for voting equipment and prohibit non-US citizens from being able to donate in certain elections.
It also would condition federal election grant funding on states adhering to the strict ballot deadline, the report added.
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