The U.S. Department of Justice said Friday it is suing Alabama for trying to remove noncitizens from voting lists, arguing the effort comes too close to the presidential election in November.
According to the Washington Times, the DOJ asked a federal judge to order Alabama to put the names of the presumed ineligible voters back on the active voter lists, in part because it claims that some actual citizens were told that they had been moved to an inactive voter file.
The DOJ’s argument also boils down to timing, since Alabama announced its intentions 84 days before the election, which might violate the federal National Voter Registration Act that prohibits the deletion of names from election lists within 90 days of an election.