US judge bars Justice Department from threatening election workers
Judge Trina Thompson issued a temporary restraining order late on Friday. It bars the Justice Department from pressuring officials to set aside or stop counting ballots it says non-citizens may have cast, days before Tuesday's midterms.
A federal judge in California has ordered the US Justice Department to stop threatening election workers with criminal charges over how they process ballots. US District Judge Trina Thompson of the Northern District of California issued the temporary restraining order late on Friday, the Guardian reported. The order also bars the department from demanding that local officials set aside or not count ballots that the administration says non-citizens may have cast. Labour unions and civil rights groups brought the case. They accused the Justice Department of interfering with their duty to run the election. Thompson wrote that the department's "intimidation, threats, and attempts at coercion" forced election workers to choose between unlawful demands and their legal duties. Choosing their duties exposed them to the risk of criminal prosecution. She added that the actions were "likely to have the effect of interfering with election administration and disenfranchising lawful voters", the BBC reported. The dispute centres on California. The administration says the state sent ballots to about 20,000 people who may not be US citizens. It wants those ballots held back until citizenship is checked. According to the BBC, armed Department of Homeland Security officials later delivered letters to county officials. The letters threatened charges if the officials did not set the ballots aside. California officials say the list is highly unreliable. Two data scientists from the University of California, Los Angeles found that more than 40% of the flagged ballots carry…
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