Citizenship lists that the Trump administration has ordered be compiled and shared with state election officials this year are likely to be incomplete and unreliable for determining voter eligibility, the Justice Department told a federal judge on Thursday.<\/p>\n
The admission, in Federal District Court in Washington, came in a lawsuit challenging an executive order<\/a> President Trump signed in March that would create state registries of citizens using federal data, and require the U.S. Postal Service to regulate mail-in voting<\/a>.<\/p>\n The admission appeared to compound what Mr. Trump had already acknowledged could be legal troubles for the order, which is part of his sweeping attempt to bend election mechanics to his will. The Constitution does not give the president any explicit authority over elections, and Democratic-led states and organizations are turning to the courts to try to halt the efforts.<\/p>\n During the hearing on Thursday, Stephen M. Pezzi, a senior counsel at the Justice Department, told Judge Carl J. Nichols that it was too speculative to anticipate that states might seize on the lists to purge registered voters.<\/p>\n \u201cNo list is ever going to be perfect,\u201d he said. \u201cCertainly, a responsible state wouldn\u2019t throw everyone who isn\u2019t on the list off the voter roll.\u201d<\/p>\n Mr. Pezzi allowed that it was possible that some states might be \u201coverzealous\u201d in checking the lists against their current registered voters, after Texas last year compared its voter rolls with federal data and started the process<\/a> of removing roughly 2,700 voters deemed \u201cpotential noncitizens.\u201d<\/p>\n But he said it was more likely that some states would ignore the lists altogether, while others might turn to them for help with \u201clawful purposes\u201d such as \u201cpost-election law enforcement.\u201d<\/p>\n Judge Nichols indicated he would release a preliminary decision shortly, and warned the government not to take steps on the order without updating the court.<\/p>\n Various Democratic organizations sued in April to stop the order from taking effect, calling it unconstitutional and arguing that using Social Security data and other federal resources to produce the lists violated federal privacy law. The case contends that Mr. Trump resorted to the order only after Congress failed to pass<\/a> a broad package of other restrictions such as strict voter identification rules<\/a>.<\/p>\n But Mr. Pezzi insisted on Thursday that the order did nothing more than take data already in the government\u2019s possession to make it available to states.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s not a list of people to be targeted,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s not a list of noncitizens.\u201d<\/p>\n Lawyers representing the groups warned of an ungovernable election season if the order was not blocked, predicting county-level officials even in states that rejected the lists would feel a responsibility to turn potential voters away based on the names provided by the federal government.<\/p>\n Danielle Lang, a lawyer for the League of United Latin American Citizens, told Judge Nichols that the order was \u201cdrafted to cause maximum damage and chaos\u201d and would coincide with primaries already underway in many states. She argued that the lists would invariably be incomplete and outdated.<\/p>\n \u201cThey\u2019re going to be stale the very next day,\u201d she said. \u201cPeople move. People turn 18.\u201d<\/p>\n Judge Nichols also pressed lawyers representing the Democratic groups, asking them to explain how states that decided to ignore the lists would be affected.<\/p>\n \u201cEven in New York, I would bet top dollar that there are going to be local election officials\u201d who act based on the lists, Ms. Lang said.<\/p>\n In an attempt to defer judgment, departments and agencies affected by the order submitted briefs to the court before Thursday\u2019s hearing saying that their responses to the executive order were in preliminary stages.<\/p>\n For instance, the order directs the Postal Service to develop a protocol for sending only mail-in or absentee ballots of voters deemed eligible through the lists. But Steven W. Monteith, the Postal Service\u2019s executive vice president, wrote in a declaration to the court<\/a> that the agency was in the \u201cdeliberation phase\u201d and had not \u201creached any final decisions about the substance of a proposed rule.\u201d<\/p>\n Experts said a rollout of a new way of handling mail ballots mere months before a midterm election would itself create problems for the Postal Service.<\/p>\n If Mr. Trump\u2019s order withstands legal challenges, \u201cthe Postal Service is going to be put into a challenging administrative role,\u201d said Kevin R. Kosar, a Postal Service analyst at the conservative-leaning American Enterprise Institute. \u201cIt\u2019s just going to put a lot of additional work on the agency, and it\u2019s not clear that there\u2019s going to be any resources provided to them for this purpose,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n Also at stake is the service\u2019s independence, which was established by the 1970 Postal Reorganization Act. \u201cIt\u2019s independent; it has its own funding,\u201d said James S. O\u2019Rourke, an emeritus professor at the University of Notre Dame who has studied the Postal Service. \u201cThey\u2019re not accountable to the president or to an executive agency.\u201d<\/p>\n