A federal judge in New Jersey blocked the Justice Department from gaining access to the state’s unredacted voter rolls on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
District Judge Zahid Quraishi, a Biden appointee, ruled that handing over the rolls could give rise to privacy concerns for voters. The ruling is the latest defeat for President Donald Trump’s administration after the DOJ sued Utah, Oklahoma<\/a>, Kentucky, West Virginia, and New Jersey for access to their voter rolls earlier this year.<\/p>\n The administration argued that Title III of the Civil Rights Act granted federal authorities access to the lists, but Quraishi disagreed.<\/p>\n TRUMP-APPOINTED FEDERAL JUDGE TOSSES DOJ LAWSUIT SEEKING ARIZONA VOTER DATA<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n “The plain text of Title III applies only to records \u2018which come into\u2019 election officers\u2019 \u2018possession\u2019 and thus does not extend to New Jersey\u2019s computerized VRL [voter registration list] – a document the State itself created,” Quraishi wrote.<\/p>\n Quraishi’s ruling also comes amid a statewide controversy related to noncitizen voting in New Jersey<\/a>.<\/p>\n New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill<\/a> admitted that week that a “serious software error” led to the mistaken registration of roughly 6,600 noncitizens<\/a> through the state’s Motor Vehicle System, while the company that provides the identity-related security services denied any wrongdoing.<\/p>\n DEMOCRATS CONCEDE NJ VOTER-ROLL FAILURE WAS \u2018HORRIBLE\u2019 \u2014 BUT REJECT BROADER FRAUD FEARS<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n “In New Jersey, we absolutely need to have accountability for what happened,” Sen. Andy Kim, D-N.J., said of the incident. “It was just horrible. There was a big problem with that computer problem that they had. We need to try to address that going forward.”<\/p>\n Sherrill said she immediately ordered an investigation after the error was discovered and that the state’s Division of Elections is removing ineligible voters<\/a> from the rolls. She said fewer than 400 of those improperly registered cast ballots.<\/p>\n Reports also surfaced this week that roughly\u00a075,000 noncitizens<\/a>\u00a0had been summoned for jury duty through state databases, according to multiple reports, broadening the controversy beyond the Motor Vehicle Commission and prompting additional Republican calls for a wider investigation<\/a>.<\/p>\n Fox News’ Charles Creitz contributed to this report.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A federal judge in New Jersey blocked the Justice Department from gaining access to the state’s unredacted voter rolls on Wednesday. District Judge Zahid Quraishi, a Biden appointee, ruled that handing over the rolls could give rise to privacy concerns for voters. The ruling is the latest defeat for President Donald Trump’s administration after the … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-76757","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76757","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=76757"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76757\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=76757"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=76757"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=76757"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}