By Nate Raymond
BOSTON (Reuters) -A federal judge on Friday blocked President Donald Trump’s administration from implementing parts of his sweeping executive order overhauling federal elections, including by requiring voters to prove they are U.S. citizens and barring states from counting mail-in ballots received after Election Day.
U.S. District Judge Denise Casper in Boston issued a preliminary injunction at the behest of 19 Democratic-led states who argued that the president lacked the authority to mandate changes to federal elections and the states’ voting procedures.
The lawsuit is one of several across the nation challenging Trump’s March 25 executive order, which he signed after years of raising doubts about the integrity of the U.S. electoral system and falsely claiming that his 2020 loss to Democratic former President Joe Biden resulted from widespread voter fraud.
Part of Trump’s order has already been blocked by a federal judge in Washington who in April prevented the administration from enforcing provisions requiring changes to the voter registration form and for federal election officials to assess whether people who are registering to vote are citizens.
But that ruling was narrower than the one issued by Casper, who not only faulted the citizenship-proof provisions of Trump’s order but also the part barring states from counting mail-in ballots received after Election Day.
The judge, an appointee of Democratic President Barack Obama, said, “The text of the Election Day statutes require only that all votes are cast by Election Day, not that they are received by that date.”
(Reporting by Nate Raymond in Boston; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Mark Porter)
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