By John Kruzel
WASHINGTON, Sept 8 (Reuters) – President Donald Trump’s administration asked the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday to allow it to use a revamped immigration database for checking the accuracy of state voter rolls, one of a series of actions that boosts federal involvement in voting ahead of November’s midterm elections.
Justice Department lawyers asked the court to halt a Washington, D.C.-based federal judge’s June ruling that blocked the mass voter verification system, which the judge said was haphazardly assembled and contained unreliable citizenship data.
“The district court has issued an indefensible order that threatens the integrity of upcoming elections by vacating the federal government’s authority to internally use Social Security data when fulfilling its duty to respond to requests by states to verify the citizenship of individuals for voting and other purposes,” Justice Department lawyers wrote in a filing.
(Reporting by John Kruzel with additional reporting by Andrew Chung in New YorkEditing by Nick Zieminski)
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