By Tom Brown and David Adams
Sept 14 (Reuters) - An Iowa judge issued a temporary
injunction on Friday blocking the state's plans to verify the
citizenship status of voters before the Nov. 6 election in the
Midwestern swing state.
The injunction was a setback for Iowa's Republican Governor
Terry Branstad, whose government had hoped to check on the
citizenship of more than 3,500 people to purge state voter rolls
of potential illegal immigrants.
Iowa District Court Judge Mary Pat Grunderson said the
effort to verify the legal status of voters could not proceed
while a lawsuit against the potential voter purge goes forward.
"The court concludes the harm that granting the temporary
injunction may prevent outweighs the harm that may result from
denying it," the judge wrote in her 12-page ruling.
She stressed that the ruling was only provisional and did
not directly address the merits of the state's concern about
voter eligibility.
But she said the pursuit of new voter verification efforts,
under emergency rulemaking powers adopted by Iowa Secretary of
State Matt Schultz, had "created confusion and mistrust in the
voter registration process" in immigrant communities in Iowa.
"They have created fear that new citizens will lose their
right to vote and/or be charged with a felony, and caused some
qualified voters to feel deterred even from registering to
vote," Grunderson said in her opinion.
Schultz, the state's top election official, decried
Grunderson's ruling. "Unfortunately this ruling could (open) the
door for non-citizens to continue voting in Iowa elections," he
said in a statement.
"Although I am very disappointed in this ruling, this is
just one of many steps in the process and I am resolved to
continuing to fight for the people of Iowa and protecting the
integrity of our elections."
The legal complaint against Iowa's voter verification effort
was filed in August by the American Civil Liberties Union and
the League of United Latin American Citizens of Iowa.
"We're very pleased," said Randall Wilson, legal director of
the ACLU of Iowa, when asked about the temporary injunction.
"The Iowa public was getting the bum's rush," Wilson added.
"The law requires a real emergency before emergency laws can
be promulgated," he added.
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