Judge blocks use of federal database to check citizenship, saying it could wrongly purge voters

U.S. District Court Judge Sparkle L. Sooknanan ruled on Monday that a revamped federal tool used by state election officials to identify illegally registered noncitizen voters is unlawful. The judge blocked the use of this database, which was central to the Trump administration’s election integrity efforts, stating that the tool could lead to the wrongful purging of eligible voters from registration rolls. Consequently, the federal database cannot be utilized for citizenship verification purposes.