EL PASO, Texas (KFOX14/CBS4) — El Paso County is joining a lawsuit against the federal government over new local election requirements.
According to the El Paso County Attorney, the County is suing the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which is part of the Department of Homeland Security, for withholding 20 percent of funds from certain grant programs unless states and local governments comply with new federal requirements on how elections are conducted.
What are the new conditions?
Using hand-marked paper ballots instead of the electronic voting system.Manually audit at least 5 percent of ballots, which would add high new costs and be contrary to state law in some cases.Use the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) system to verify the citizenship of every registered voter and election worker.
The lawsuit argues that new conditions will make elections less reliable (calling SAVE an “error-prone” system), harder to run and more expensive (adding that printing the ballots alone would cost $3 million).
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“Holding critical grant funding hostage to advance a false political narrative is unlawful. It comes at the direct expense of local election offices, law enforcement agencies, and the communities they are entrusted to serve,” said El Paso County Attorney Christina Sanchez. “Local election offices already face some of the toughest oversight and requirements designed to keep their operations safe and secure. Imposing additional requirements is both costly and burdensome, while our law enforcement agencies rely on this funding to purchase critical equipment that helps protect and save lives.”
What Sanchez is referring to is the fact that for decades, these grants have helped local governments, including the county, providing approximately $1.75 million in funds for law enforcement and $170 thousand for first-responder equipment.
The local governments argue that these new conditions violate the Constitution’s separation of powers and the Administrative Procedure Act. The Constitution gives Congress the authority to set the terms of federal spending and provides states with the power to make rules for elections.
By filing this lawsuit, El Paso County is asking a judge for “injunctive relief,” an order to “pause” the federal decision, and eventually declare the new rules to be against the law.
El Paso County, Harris County, the Metropolitan Government of Nashville and Davidson County, Tennessee, and the City of Columbus, Ohio, filed the lawsuit Monday in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.
The county said the District of Columbia and 25 states filed a similar lawsuit seeking to block the election conditions in their states; however, the local governments in this new case are located in states that didn’t participate in that lawsuit and would likely not be protected by a favorable ruling in the states’ case.
Below is the lawsuit:
Complaint – 26-cv-02886PDF previewPreview PDF
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