Democrats Sue the Trump Administration over an Alleged Campaign to Pressure States on Voter Rolls

A new legal battle has begun over elections in the United States. A coalition of Democrats is suing the Trump administration, alleging that it is trying to impose itself on state-run elections and threatening to prosecute local election officials — setting up yet another major legal showdown less than two weeks before Election Day.

The Democratic National Committee, the party's congressional and Senate campaign arms, several high-profile lawmakers and others filed the suit late on Tuesday in federal court in Washington, D.C.

Their complaint asks a federal judge to block the administration's alleged attempts to force states to remove voters from registration lists, to segregate certain ballots, and to threaten state and local election officials 'for doing nothing more than their lawful duties.'

ABC News has reached out to the White House for comment on the suit. No response from the White House had been reported by the time of the report.

The Justice Department, for its part, has repeatedly defended its actions as part of an effort to ensure the integrity of the election system.

In recent weeks the Trump administration has clashed with officials in California, Nevada and other states over allegations of noncitizen voting. The Justice Department and the Department of Homeland Security have accused several states of knowingly keeping noncitizens on their voter rolls and refusing to cooperate in removing them.

In court papers filed on Tuesday, two officials from the Los Angeles County registrar's office presented the results of their 'preliminary analysis' of 200 individuals drawn from the Justice Department's list of some 20,000 people accused of being ineligible to vote.

According to the officials, nearly 40 percent of those 200 individuals show indications that they were born in the United States — strong evidence of citizenship. And 71.2 percent of the records show no voting history at all.

In a statement to ABC News on Tuesday, Justice Department spokesperson Kiersten Pels accused California of 'willful blindness.' She said: 'California cannot facilitate the violation of federal law. We notified California that noncitizens are likely registered to vote, and we asked the state to independently verify the citizenship of any ballots cast by people on a list that we provided. It refused to do so. Federal law doesn't permit this willful blindness.'

The states argue that the administration's steps — taken just weeks before the midterm elections — reflect federal overreach and are meant to sow distrust in the outcome of the election.

The Democrats' suit slams the administration for pressuring states to purge their voter registration lists using 'shoddily compiled lists of supposed noncitizens — target lists that have crumbled upon the barest inspection.'

'For over a decade now, President Donald J. Trump has bombarded the American people with lies and misinformation about American elections and voter fraud,' the suit says. 'While these lies have been debunked at every turn, that has never deterred the President from employing them as a pretext to seize control over elections, even as courts overwhelmingly reject that effort.' State election officials now await the outcome of this legal fight — whether pressure over purging the rolls intensifies before the vote, or a court order stops it.