A federal judge bars Homeland Security voter fraud door knocks in nine states through Election Day, finding the target lists were built on error prone data

United States District Judge Araceli Martinez Olguin issued the 19 page preliminary injunction on Wednesday in California Nurses Association v. Mullin. It covers California, Connecticut, Georgia, Missouri, Nevada, New York, Pennsylvania, Washington and Wisconsin, the nine states where Homeland Security has concentrated its search for noncitizen voting. The order does not bar the government from investigating unlawful voting. It bars field operations and interviews involving people agents know, suspect or reasonably should suspect are citizens, and operations resting wholly on records produced by the challenged matching program.

The judge stayed her own order until 5 p.m. Friday, October 23, so the administration can seek emergency review in the Ninth Circuit. If it survives, it runs until polls close on November 3.

The factual core of the ruling is the list building. Homeland Security assembled targets from tens of millions of records, including 48.2 million from independent sources the court called questionable in provenance and 50.6 million voter roll records from the Justice Department, some of them commercial copies, and used automated tools to flag suspected noncitizens. During the fall surge, reviewers had to complete at least 40 reviews each, leaving no more than about 12 minutes to take a person off the list. Martinez Olguin wrote that even under the best conditions there is a high likelihood of error, because no federal database records the citizenship status of American residents.

On the law, she found the plaintiffs are likely to succeed on their claim under Section 11(b) of the Voting Rights Act, which bars intimidating any person for urging or aiding another person to vote. The suit was brought by the California Nurses Association, National Nurses United, San Francisco and Santa Clara counties and the Voto Latino Foundation. Homeland Security and the Justice Department had not commented in the reporting at publication. The ruling lands 11 days before the midterms, and the Friday evening deadline makes the appeals court the next actor in the story.