NEW YORK, June 22 (Reuters) - A federal judge on Monday blocked the Trump administration from using a revamped version of an immigration database for checking the accuracy of state voter rolls, dealing a blow to U.S. President Donald Trump's efforts to boost the role of the federal government in elections ahead of the November midterms.
Last year, in response to Trump's executive order to allow state and local authorities to verify the immigration status of voters, the Department of Homeland Security
revamped a system it uses to verify individuals' citizenship and immigration status to allow users to search records in bulk.
In a 75-page decision on Monday, U.S. District Judge Sparkle Sooknanan in Washington, D.C. sided with voting rights and privacy advocates who argued that the overhaul of the system, known as SAVE, made it less accurate and risked disenfranchising eligible voters.
The decision comes as Trump's Republicans are locked in a fierce battle to maintain control of both houses of Congress in the November 3 midterms.
Sooknanan is an appointee of Democratic President Joe Biden.
Trump and his allies have long asserted states are not doing enough to prevent voter fraud, even though state audits and academic studies have found it is rare. Trump argues, falsely, that his loss in the 2020 election was due to fraud.
Critics say Republicans are driven less by concerns over election security than by an effort to gain political advantage by narrowing the electorate, risking the disenfranchisement of eligible, often Democratic-leaning voters.
(Reporting by Luc Cohen in New York; Editing by Noeleen Walder)
