Thursday on MS NOW’s “The Briefing,” Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) said the executive branch of government does not have the power “to compile a list of undocumented or illegal voters in the country.”
Raskin said, “It’s cartoonish and it’s clownish, but it’s also completely lawless. And there was actually a federal district court decision handed down today in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia.”
He continued, “More than 20 states have won when the Trump DOJ has tried to get them to turn over their voter rolls. And all of those courts said the federal government has absolutely no authority to do that. This decision today from the D.C. District Court went further and said they don’t even have power to compile this list, much less compel the states and conscript them to participate in this federal program.”
He added, “The program itself is lawless. Why? Because it’s not rooted in any federal statute. As you know, the federal government only has the specifically delegated powers to it under the Constitution, and the states have power over voting. Now, Congress can act under our powers to regulate the time, place, manner of voting to supplement what the states are doing. But the judge found that we although we passed things like the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and we created the Election Assistance Commission, never did we give the power, much less the duty, to the executive branch of government, to compile a list of undocumented or illegal voters in the country, and then to either compel the states to participate in this matching program, or simply to send it out there to try to contradict what the states are doing. So it’s a completely lawless venture that they’re involved in.”
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