By Luc Cohen
April 21 (Reuters) - Voting rights activists accused the Trump administration in a lawsuit on Tuesday of laying the groundwork for voter purges that could illegally remove eligible voters ahead of tightly contested U.S. midterm elections in November.
The lawsuit asks a Washington, D.C., federal judge to bar the Department of Justice from accessing or using states' lists of registered voters and to delete data it had already obtained.
It was filed by lawyers with the American Civil Liberties
Union, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington and the Protect Democracy Project.
REPUBLICANS IN BATTLE TO RETAIN CONTROL OF CONGRESS
The lawsuit challenges President Donald Trump's effort to expand the government’s role in elections ahead of midterms when his Republican Party is locked in a tight battle to maintain control of both houses of Congress.
The U.S. Constitution says elections must be administered by individual states, and 18 states have already agreed, or signaled plans, to share voter data with the department.
Critics say Republicans’ push to control voter rolls is driven less by election security than by false fraud claims and an effort to gain political advantage by narrowing the electorate, risking the disenfranchisement of eligible, often Democratic‑leaning, voters.
“The U.S. Department of Justice has launched an illegal and unprecedented quest to stockpile millions of Americans’ confidential voter data," the complaint reads, alleging the agency was building "a sprawling new voter surveillance and purging apparatus" without congressional authorization.
The Justice Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Its lawyers have said the agency has authority to ensure states are doing enough to keep ineligible people off the rolls.
JUSTICE DEPARTMENT SUES DOZENS OF STATES
Beginning last year, the Justice Department asked states to provide unredacted copies of their voter rolls, including drivers’ license numbers and partial Social Security numbers.
In an interview with Fox News' "Sunday Morning Futures" program, Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon said that the department had reviewed 60 million voter records so far and found the names of 350,000 dead persons and 25,000 people who lacked proof of citizenship.
Dhillon, who leads the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division, did not provide any evidence that votes were cast for those names.
The Justice Department has sued 30 states which have resisted handing over their rolls, as well as Washington, D.C. Federal judges in five states have dismissed those lawsuits, finding the department failed to justify its demands.
Tuesday's lawsuit is separate from those cases.
The new lawsuit argues DOJ plans to use the data to direct states to remove voters based on flawed verification methods, risking “false positives” that would wrongly purge eligible citizens.
(Reporting by Luc Cohen in New York;Editing by Noeleen Walder and Howard Goller)
