By Luc Cohen
May 28 (Reuters) - A U.S. judge on Thursday declined to block President Donald Trump's executive tightening rules on mail-in voting in a loss for the Democratic Party, whose lawyers argued that it could disenfranchise millions of voters.
The decision comes as Trump's Republicans are locked in a tight battle to keep control of both houses of the U.S. Congress in the November midterm elections. Trump has for years pushed the false claim that his 2020 election defeat was the result of widespread voter fraud and has criticized voting by mail.
The executive order signed by Trump on March 31 directed his administration to compile a list of confirmed U.S. citizens eligible to vote in each state and to use federal data to help state election officials verify who is eligible to vote.
It also required the U.S. Postal Service to only deliver ballots to voters on each state's approved mail-in ballot list, and required states to preserve election-related records for five years.
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In urging Washington-based U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols to issue a preliminary injunction blocking the measure, plaintiffs including Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York argued that the order infringed on individual states' rights to regulate elections under the U.S. Constitution.
The Democrats argued that the executive order's direction that agencies use Department of Homeland Security and Social Security Administration data to build "state citizenship lists" risked improperly excluding lawfully registered voters because the data sources can be out of date and may include errors.
The Justice Department countered that the litigation was premature because federal agencies have not yet implemented the executive order.
Nichols had at times appeared sympathetic to that argument during oral arguments on May 14.
A coalition of Democratic states brought a similar lawsuit challenging the executive order in federal court in Boston.
(Reporting by Luc Cohen in New YorkEditing by Bill Berkrot)