asked to hold a status conference<\/a> on the matter.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\nDOJ\u2019s response: We don\u2019t need a conference because we were merely acting on DHS\u2019s findings.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The department said its recent California lawsuit \u201ccannot be construed as part of the same purported policy that this Court vacated,\u201d \u2014 and even claimed that the voter list maintenance project Sooknanan blocked doesn\u2019t exist.<\/p>\n
Because, as DOJ argued, its recent actions in the Golden State stemmed from DHS\u2019s \u201cindependent analysis under its own authority based on a voter roll that it received through a lawful purchase,\u201d which then resulted in DHS\u2019s lawsuit against California.<\/p>\n
In response to the department\u2019s nationwide voter roll grab, Common Cause sued the department in April, arguing that its effort amounts to an attempt to federalize voter list maintenance. On Oct. 9, Sooknanan said the DOJ unlawfully exceeded its authority and violated privacy laws and blocked the DOJ from continuing its voter roll project.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Common Cause wasn\u2019t the only one to claim the DOJ violated a court order.<\/p>\n
California Secretary of State Shirley Weber (D) made a similar claim in response to the DOJ last week.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIn that order, the court vacated the DOJ\u2019s policy of, among other things, comparing state voter roll information \u2018against a federal database to identify purportedly ineligible voters,\u2019 in collaboration with DHS, \u2018and demanding that states remove voters from their rolls based on the results of those comparisons,\u2019\u201d Weber said. \u201cIt appears that your letter may utilize a policy that a federal court has already deemed unlawful.\u201d<\/p>\n
Pro-voting intervenors in the DOJ\u2019s recent California lawsuit also made a similar claim.\u00a0<\/p>\n
But the DOJ held firm that they did no such thing since the basis of the lawsuit came from a DHS \u2014 not DOJ \u2014 investigation.<\/p>\n
\u201cTo be part of the supposedly \u2018comprehensive effort to request the voter rolls from all states and the District of Columbia\u2019 that this Court vacated, the California lawsuit must at least originate from the DOJ\u2019s request for California\u2019s voter roll,\u201d the department said in its Monday response.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Department of Justice (DOJ) claimed its recent California lawsuit to block the state from counting ballots from…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":502286,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[7,9,8],"class_list":["post-502285","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-california","tag-california","tag-california-headlines","tag-california-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/502285","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=502285"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/502285\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/502286"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=502285"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=502285"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=502285"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}