A federal judge in Washington, DC has been dealing with a drastic executive order regarding President Donald Trump's election. Orders issued on March 25th are intended to restructure the National Voter Registration Rules. However, Judge Colleen Coller Coterry called some of them unconstitutional and halted their enforcement. She wrote in her 120-page opinion released Thursday:
Our constitution entrusts Congress and the state, not the president, to regulate federal elections.
This decision suspends two important sections of the order. One requires documentary proof of US citizenship to register using the federal voter form. Others force the agencies distributing the registration form to directly contradict federal law in order to first verify citizenship.
Kollar-Kotelly warned that the executive order would cause “irreparable harm” to voter registration efforts, and said the government “provides little defense of the President's order on merit.”
Avoid the council
Trump's order sought to force changes that reflect the Save Act, a Republican-backed bill that was recently passed in the House. The bill is still pending in the Senate and will require evidence of citizenship to register for the vote.
But Trump didn't wait for Congress.
Kollar-Kotelly was appointed to the federal bench by President Bill Clinton after previously serving as Reagan's appointee of the DC Superior Court, writing:
The statutory delegation of powers to the administrative department does not allow the president to short-circumvent the deliberation process of Congress through executive orders.
In one argument over the presidential order, the judge cited Framer, saying, “Congress has the power to oversee (election) regulations. The president has no distinctive character at all.”
She continued her quote from the Federalists, No. 59:
In fact, enforcement regulators for federal elections do not seem to have crossed the hearts of framers.
