Major city and county governments are suing the Trump administration to claw back grant money withheld for their refusal to implement election security measures.
On Monday, the cities of Nashville, Tennessee, and Columbus, Ohio, along with Harris County and El Paso County in Texas, sued the Department of Homeland Security after the agency issued new grant requirements for cities and counties that included verification of voters’ citizenship and election audits.
The department said it would withhold 20% of Federal Emergency Management Agency grant money until the jurisdictions took the measures, saying at least 3% of their grant funding should be dedicated to election security. The measures also included a transition to hand-marked paper ballots and a reconciliation of the number of registered voters with the number of votes cast.
“This partisan pushback is nothing new,” a DHS spokesperson told the Daily Signal. “We fully expected opposition to common-sense measures designed to protect election security and safeguard the integrity of American democracy.”
“Concerns over voting processes, data security, and registration practices have made it clear that action is required,” the DHS spokesperson added. “These new requirements will preserve election integrity.”
The plaintiffs’ lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, alleges that the requirements would lead to a loss of critical counterterrorism emergency funding and that the policy exceeds the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s authority.
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“Congress created the Homeland Security Grant Program (HSGP) to help state and local governments prevent, protect against, and respond to terrorism,” the complaint says, adding, “Congress did not create the HSGP to empower the federal government to control state and local election procedures. Yet the administration has now hijacked the program to do just that.”
The Democrat-leaning jurisdictions are located in three states that went comfortably for President Donald Trump in the last three election cycles. Harris County includes much of the Houston metropolitan area.
The Heritage Foundation’s Election Integrity Scorecard ranks Tennessee alongside Arkansas for having the nation’s strongest election laws, while Texas and Ohio are tied at 11th place.
Withholding 20% of funding would mean a loss of more than $200 million nationwide to local governments unless they agree to implement the election procedure changes, the lawsuit claims.
“FEMA has even suggested that unless a state complies with these conditions, FEMA may cancel the entire HSGP award for the state, the vast majority of which is earmarked for counties and municipalities like plaintiffs here,” the lawsuit says. “FEMA’s changes will fundamentally alter how states and local jurisdictions administer elections.”
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