By Nate Raymond
BOSTON, June 2 (Reuters) - A federal judge in Boston on Tuesday will hear a bid by Democratic-led states and voting rights groups to block U.S. President Donald Trump's executive order aiming to tighten rules for mail-in voting.
U.S. District Judge Indira Talawni is slated to hear arguments in a pair of lawsuits just days after another judge in Washington, D.C., last week rejected a bid by the Democratic Party to similarly halt implementation of the order ahead of the November midterm
elections that will decide control of Congress.
Trump, a Republican, signed the order on March 31 after calling for years for tighter rules on voting by mail and pushing the false claim that his 2020 election defeat was the result of widespread voter fraud. Under the U.S. Constitution, states are assigned the role of administering federal elections.
The order directs his administration to compile a list of confirmed U.S. citizens eligible to vote in each state and to use federal data to help state election officials verify who is eligible to vote.
It also requires the U.S. Postal Service to only deliver ballots to voters on each state's approved mail-in ballot list. USPS on Friday moved to implement Trump's directive by issuing new proposed rules requiring states to provide the names and barcodes tied to their mail-in ballots for federal elections. Trump's order would also require states to preserve election-related records for five years.
State attorneys general and other plaintiffs argue Trump's order violates the U.S. Constitution and unlawfully interferes with mail-in voting by directing USPS to block the delivery of ballots based on criteria outside the states' control.
The lawsuit said allowing Trump's order to stand would force states to rush to overhaul their election systems before November, causing chaos and likely disenfranchising eligible voters.
Talwani, who was appointed by Democratic President Barack Obama, has presided over several other cases challenging Trump's second term agenda and has frequently ruled in favor of litigants challenging his administration's policies.
She is hearing the case after Washington-based U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols, a Trump appointee, on Thursday declined to issue a preliminary injunction in a related lawsuit brought by Democrats challenging Trump's order, finding their request was premature as the order had yet to be implemented.
(Reporting by Nate Raymond in Boston; editing by David Bario and David Gaffen)
