A coalition of Democratic lawmakers and campaign committees filed a lawsuit on Wednesday asking a federal judge to impose a sweeping halt to efforts by the Trump administration to control various aspects of election administration ahead of next month’s midterm elections, describing a “pattern of intimidation” by the federal government.
The challenge took aim at several federal agencies that the coalition argued were working together to propagate falsehoods about voter fraud to justify new requirements for how states run their elections.
In particular, they asked the judge to block the federal government from ordering states to disqualify individual voters or from directing states to “segregate (and ultimately not count) ballots” from people already registered to vote. They also asked the judge to forbid the administration to threaten to prosecute state or local election officials for conducting routine administration.
The filing came after the Justice Department charged more than two dozen California residents this week with violating federal election laws and filed a lawsuit last week to try to prevent California from counting as many as 20,000 mail-in ballots from people the Department of Homeland Security deemed “likely noncitizens.”
Only U.S. citizens can legally vote in federal elections.
The new Trump efforts have come even as other efforts to catalog instances of voting fraud and seize state voter rolls have repeatedly fallen apart.
“None of this is lawful,” the suit said.
The lawsuit noted President Trump’s long-term fixation on discredited theories about election security. It argued that the Justice Department and the Homeland Security Department had been effectively enlisted in a personal crusade by the president to take over elections, using widespread voter fraud as a pretense.
“For over a decade now, President Donald J. Trump has bombarded the American people with lies and misinformation about American elections and voter fraud,” the group wrote. “While these lies have been debunked at every turn, that has never deterred the president from employing them as a pretext to seize control over elections, even as courts overwhelmingly reject that effort.”
The lawsuit argues that the Trump administration has exceeded its constitutional authority by interfering in the administration of elections, which the Constitution delegates to the states. The case was assigned to Chief Judge James E. Boasberg, who has clashed with the Justice Department under Mr. Trump over its handling of other cases last year.
In a statement, a Justice Department spokesman responded that the agency “enforces federal election law, and election integrity is a top priority.”
“Every action the department has taken to protect the integrity of this year’s elections is grounded in the law and being litigated in open court,” the spokesman added.
Democrats have challenged Mr. Trump’s efforts in various states, including California. But the new suit appears to be an effort to secure a court order blocking federal intervention nationally.
Filed in Federal District Court in Washington, it ticked through a number of federal initiatives it said were all rooted in Mr. Trump’s desire to control voting that so far courts have addressed one by one.
It cites, for instance, the more than 30 lawsuits the Justice Department has filed to individually compel states to turn over their voter rolls for review. Federal judges have rejected the Justice Department’s arguments or dismissed the lawsuits entirely more than two dozen times.
The lawsuit also pointed to efforts by the Homeland Security Department to use federal immigration data to cast doubt on state voter rolls, even though months of federal investigations have turned up vanishingly few instances of noncitizens registered to vote.
In September, the Supreme Court allowed states that were inclined to do so to consult with the agency to check for any noncitizens on their voter registries.
The department has taken steps to compile and send lists of known citizens in each state to state elections officials, despite its own determinations that the lists would most likely contain out-of-date information.
Election officials in California have said in sworn statements that they have examined some of the 20,000 voters flagged by federal officials and found that the list includes errors and that a “high percentage” of the people listed were actually born in the United States.
Mr. Trump has also threatened state officials with investigation. Shortly after the Justice Department filed suit against California last week, he warned on social media that officials risked prosecution if they tabulated ballots submitted by people the federal government had flagged.
“They will all go to jail for a long period of time!!!” he wrote.
“This lawlessness did not arise in a vacuum,” the lawsuit stated. “It comes as courts across the country have broadly enjoined the president’s executive orders concerning elections, forbidden his attempt to nationalize rules for voting by mail and refused his demands that states turn over their unredacted voter rolls.”
