Donald Trump’s unilateral effort to remodel the electoral processes is an attempt to “short -circuit the deliberative process of Congress by executive order,” wrote a federal judge in Washington, DC, on Thursday afternoon.
In an opinion of 120 pages, the American district judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly blocked the Trump administration to demand that the citizenship test registers to vote and order that electoral officials “evaluate” the citizenship of any person who receives public assistance before allowing them to register. He also prohibited the Electoral Assistance Commission to retain the federal funds of the states that did not comply with the order.
“Our Constitution trusts Congress and States, not the President, with the authority to regulate federal elections,” he wrote. “No legal delegation of authority to the Executive Branch allows the President of the deliberative process of the Congress of Short Circuit by Executive Order.”
After Trump issued an executive order last month “preserving and protecting the integrity of the US elections,” three demands were presented separately in the Federal Court of DC to challenge the policy, including the demands presented by the National Democratic Committee (with the New York Senator Charles Schumer and the Hakeem Jeffries representative) National Association for the Advance of Color Peoples.
“These consolidated cases are about the separation of powers,” Judge Kollar-Kotelly wrote.
He concluded that Trump’s unilateral effort to remodel the elections exceeds his own authority, noting that the Department of Justice “almost did not offer defense of the president’s order.”
If Trump wishes to reform the electoral processes, he wrote, Congress would be the appropriate branch to do so, adding the Congress is “currently discussing legislation that would affect many of the changes that the president intends to order.”
For now, the judge allowed the Trump administration to carry out two parts of the executive order related to the application of pre -existing laws.
One of the sections ordered the Department of National Security and the State Department to make accessible voting databases for the government’s efficiency department to identify non -citizens registered to vote.
The second section ordered the Department of Justice to take measures against states that do not adopt the Trump requirement that tickets are received by mail for election day.
Judge Kollar-Kotelly wrote that he allowed the application of these sections because the demands were filed by the plaintiffs who lacked position on these issues.
