A Democrat-appointed judge is barring President Donald Trump from enacting election integrity measures ahead of November’s midterms, instead allowing the possibility for noncitizens to vote and influence the outcome of American elections. Judge Denise Casper of the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts issued a permanent injunction on Wednesday, blocking a bevy of election integrity measures the president implemented via executive order, including measures to require proof of U.S. citizenship to vote by mail and to ensure that mail-in ballots received past election day are not counted.

Casper began by noting that nobody is challenging “the undisputed principle that ‘U.S. citizenship is required to vote

in federal elections and the federal voter registration forms require attestation of citizenship,’” but that the plaintiffs in the case — Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Wisconsin — do “challenge the legality of the enumerated sections of the Executive Order.”

According to the ruling from Casper, the president’s executive order violates the Constitution’s Election Clause, delegating the responsibility of planning and running elections to states, and the separation of powers. The judge, appointed by former President Barack Obama, argued that Trump’s executive order is a means of writing new law, a power reserved at the federal level to Congress, rather than simply enforcing laws already enacted, such as the legal requirement that noncitizens are not permitted to vote in U.S. elections.

Casper therefore ruled that the challenged sections of the executive order “are unconstitutional and void because they are ultra vires and violate the separation of powers under the United States Constitution.” She barred the Trump administration from “taking any steps to require documentary proof of citizenship as part of the federal mail-in voter registration form” or from “taking any steps to alter the federal post card form … to require either documentary proof of citizenship or proof of eligibility to vote in elections in the State in which the voter is attempting to vote.”

In comments to The Washington Stand, Jessica Vaughan, director of Policy Studies at the Center for Immigration Studies, said, “The mail-in ballots are the weak link in the integrity of our elections and are very susceptible to manipulation and fraud. There is simply no way for anyone to verify that the person whose name is on the ballot is the person who filled it out.” She noted that while the Trump administration has attempted to collaborate with state governments to ensure that mail-in ballots are only sent to U.S. citizens, many blue states rebelled. “Some states simply don’t want to ensure that only citizens can vote and refuse to adopt safeguards. Usually this is because they do not support laws that differentiate between immigrants and citizens and because they believe that immigrants can be convinced to vote for the politicians that are most lenient on this and other immigration-related issues,” She observed. “They recognize that American citizens are strongly in favor of election integrity and allowing only citizens to vote, so they are trying to tip the scales the other way.”

“One problem with allowing our voter rolls to be compromised with the names of noncitizens is that some ineligible noncitizens will actually vote, even though it is a crime,” Vaughan pointed out. Federal authorities under Trump have identified numerous cases of noncitizens illegally voting in American elections. According to the Heritage Foundation, instances of noncitizens, including illegal immigrants, voting in American elections are not as rare as Democrats and their allies claim and are likely far more common than audits reveal, due to state loopholes and lax enforcement of election law.

“The bigger problem is that bad actors are able to harvest ballots cast in the names of noncitizens, usually without them knowing, and these ballots can be used to manipulate and affect the outcome” of American elections, Vaughan warned. “I am aware of numerous cases of this kind of fraud happening in the past,” she added. “Finally, there are parts of the country with large enough concentrations of immigrants that they could sway the outcome of elections and policy decisions that may be against the interests of Americans and potentially serve the interests of a foreign nation,” she continued. “This could be profoundly damaging to our sovereignty and independence in foreign affairs.”

“The right to vote is one of the few rights preserved for citizens, and that is as it should be,” Vaughan asserted. “Every time the vote of a noncitizen is counted, it dilutes the votes of citizens. Americans must insist that only they can choose their leaders and representatives without influence or input from those who are not citizens.”

Ira Mehlman, media director at the Federation for American Immigration Reform, told TWS that failing to secure American elections and allowing noncitizens to vote threatens to destabilize the American public’s trust in election outcomes. “The integrity of our democracy depends on people feeling that our elections are free and fair, that only people who are qualified to vote in this country participate in our elections,” Mehlman said. “There needs to be some kind of assurance that you’re not just going out there and finding random people, that the people who are voting are qualified to vote, can identify who they are — otherwise we’re going to be caught in this system where we’re constantly questioning the outcome of elections, and that’s not healthy for a democracy.”

“We have all been on the losing side of an election, feeling that the people we wanted were not elected, but we accept the outcome because we believe it is the will of the American public, the will of the majority,” Mehlman continued. “When you have situations where suddenly a whole bunch of votes come in a week after the election has been held and it changes the outcome, you know, it may be legitimate, but it certainly raises doubts in people’s minds, and we should not have that,” he continued.

“We’re living in the 21st century — we should be able to have a system where we can verify that the people who are registered to vote are entitled to vote in this country, have a right to vote in this country, and that when they cast the ballot that they are who they say they are,” Mehlman added. “In that sort of system, people will be willing to accept the outcomes of elections even when they’re disappointed.”