By Luc Cohen
July 23 (Reuters) – A coalition of mostly Democratic-led states asked a federal judge on Thursday to block the Department of Homeland Security from withholding certain disaster-related funds until states adopt election administration practices favored by Republican President Donald Trump’s administration.
The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Rhode Island by 25 states and the District of Columbia, marks the latest legal battle over voting procedures ahead of November’s midterm elections, with Trump’s party locked in a tight battle to retain control of Congress.
DHS announced on July 10 that it would withhold 20% of Federal Emergency Management Agency grant awards meant to help states prepare for potential terrorist attacks and other threats until those states submit plans to use equipment that accepts hand-marked paper ballots rather than electronic voting systems that use bar codes and QR codes to count votes.
The restrictions involve more than $1 billion in grant money.
DHS said states also would have to manually audit at least 5% of ballots cast, reconcile the number of voters who participated in each federal election with the number of votes cast and compare their voter rolls to a DHS database to make sure no non-U.S. citizens were improperly registered to vote.
STATES ADMINISTER ELECTIONS
In their lawsuit, the states — led by Rhode Island, California, Illinois and New Jersey — said the administration’s plans to condition the funds on election changes exceeded the federal government’s authority. The U.S. Constitution assigns states the role of administering federal elections.
“Congress never gave DHS or FEMA authority to rewrite state election law,” the lawsuit complaint read.
The states said they were allocated more than $740 million in the 2026 fiscal year, meaning DHS would withhold at least $148 million under the disputed policy. The grant programs have existed for years, and none of them were designed with election security specifically in mind, the lawsuit said.
In a statement, a FEMA spokesperson said the new requirements would preserve election integrity.
“We fully expected these left-wing politicians to oppose common-sense measures designed to protect election security,” the spokesperson said.
Trump and his allies have made false claims about widespread voting fraud in U.S. elections including the 2020 presidential election that he lost. Democrats and voting rights advocates say Trump is seeking to undermine public confidence in election administration and lay the groundwork for challenging the results of the midterms should Republicans lose control of either the House of Representatives or the Senate.
The administration has said states are not doing enough to prevent voter fraud and voting by non-U.S. citizens, and has sought to bolster federal control over elections.
NEW JERSEY VOTING
The Democratic governor of New Jersey said on Tuesday that more than 6,000 non-U.S. citizens were accidentally registered to vote in the state and nearly 400 cast ballots, prompting demands from the Justice Department for data on these voters.
Independent studies and audits have found voter fraud to be rare. A Reuters analysis of federal court data published on Sunday undercut Trump’s assertion that a conspiracy of non-U.S. citizen voting is afoot in America, finding that many criminal cases involving such voting have stemmed from voter confusion, miscommunication with election officials or administrative errors.
(Reporting by Luc Cohen in New York; Editing by Will Dunham)
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