Trump's election 'lists' executive order is 'virtually guaranteed' to harm eligible voters in 'large numbers' if courts don't act: Filing

Armed with a Sharpie, President Donald Trump issued an executive order that "will result in the exclusion and disenfranchisement of eligible voters" if the courts do not stop it, according to a lawsuit.

The League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), Secure Families Initiative, and the Arizona Students' Association have joined with Senate Democrats and the NAACP in challenging the order "Ensuring Citizenship Verification and Integrity in Federal Elections," which Trump signed on March 31.

The plaintiffs cast it as "virtually guaranteed" that "large numbers" of eligible voters will be wrongly excluded from Trump administration lists and "disenfranchised" based on inaccurate, incomplete, or otherwise stale government data.

By its own terms, the Trump order establishes "State Citizenship Lists […] derived from Federal citizenship and naturalization records, [Social Security Administration] SSA records, SAVE data, and other relevant Federal databases," and prioritizes investigations and prosecutions "related to election fraud." Trump further ordered the U.S. Postal Service to propose "uniform standards for mail-in or absentee ballot services."

According to the plaintiffs, this is "not the Trump Administration's first attempt at rewriting the country's election rules," but these efforts should be blocked, just as others were by multiple courts.

"Contrary to the commands of the Order, the President has no power to create a federal voter eligibility screening regime or to require the Postal Service to refuse delivery of certain mail ballots," said a memorandum in support of a preliminary injunction to block implementation of the order.

The memo was filed Friday, the same day that DOJ lost its fifth round in a row in related efforts to compel more than 30 states to hand over "unredacted" voter rolls.

There, Rhode Island persuaded a judge that the Trump administration's demands for "sensitive information," like driver's licenses and partial Social Security numbers, did not have a "factual basis" underlying them.

Questions remain, however, about what will come of the FBI's search warrant in Fulton County, Georgia, where the government seized 2020 election ballots, tabulators, and voter rolls.

FBI Director Kash Patel over the weekend vowed 2020 election-related arrests while denying a report in the Atlantic that raised concerns about his "excessive drinking" and declared him missing in action. And now he's suing over the report.

But just as Fulton County has argued from the start that Trump couldn't have been clearer about his desire to "take over the voting," the LULAC plaintiffs say Trump's latest attempt to "usurp power over federal elections" must fail.

"Contrary to the commands of the Order, the President has no power to create a federal voter eligibility screening regime or to require the Postal Service to refuse delivery of certain mail ballots," the memo said, citing the "imminent harm that the Order inflicts on their organizations and members."

The plaintiffs added that the DOJ's state voter roll project showed both the administration's end "goal" and why an injunction is warranted.

"DOJ's public statements confirm that its goal is not to review list maintenance procedures, but to expand federal control over elections and target voters for removal," the filing said, claiming that plaintiffs' own members are "likely to be incorrectly excluded from the State Citizenship List and disenfranchised as a result."