What fresh leftist lunacy is this, coming up at us on the Fourth of July?

According to Cristina Laila at GatewayPundit:

An Obama-appointed federal judge on Monday issued a preliminary injunction against Florida’s election law that imposed limitations on third-party voter registration organizations.

In May Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (R) signed SB 7020, a law that barred non-citizens from handling or collecting voter registration forms.

One of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit is an immigrant from El Salvador who works for “Mi Vecino,” a third party voter registration organization.

What, exactly, is "unconstitutional" about not letting foreign nationals participate in our elections, including the vital task of collecting voter registrations from presumably, citizens?

According to the Obama-appointed judge, Mark Walker, in his ruling:

One new provision bars noncitizens from registering citizens to vote, thus discriminating based on alienage, one of the most questionable classifications in equal protection jurisprudence. The other exposes individuals working for third party voter registration organizations to felony prosecutions for retaining voter information without telling them to whom the prohibition applies, what they can retain, and when they can retain it.Florida may, of course, regulate elections, including the voter registration process. Here, however, the challenged provisions exemplify something Florida has struggled with in recent years; namely, governing within the bounds set by the United States Constitution.

Florida may, of course, regulate elections, including the voter registration process. Here, however, the challenged provisions exemplify something Florida has struggled with in recent years; namely, governing within the bounds set by the United States Constitution. When state government power threatens to spread beyond constitutional bounds and reduce individual rights to ashes, the federal judiciary stands as a firewall.2 The Free State of Florida is simply not free to exceed the bounds of the United States Constitution.

For the reasons that follow, Plaintiffs are entitled to a preliminary injunction.

He cited aliens "serving their community" as largely his judicial logic, along with "equal protection" under the law as the rest of it.

So aliens, including illegal aliens, are now equal-protection matters, and if an alien can't collect registrations, or for that matter, vote, he's being discriminated against by all those dirty racists who happen to be U.S. citizens? Illegals, of course, are great ones for knowing where all the valid U.S. citizens are in this game, aren't they? And realistically, are they going to know a whole lot of potentially valid voters, or might they have an inherent interest in registering people just like themselves with their special interests, who are either foreign non-citizens here legally, or foreign illegals?

The second part of that initial claim is even more disturbing. Apparently the foreigners have been collecting data off the new voter registrations that they are gathering and turning in beforehand -- and doing something with that data whether a voter likes it or not.

The data collected could be used to sell lists to Democrat candidates for their mailed campaign literature perhaps, or to pressure voters over the phone, and if these groups are really partisan, to simply give away to those Democrat candidates, which negates the nonpartisan purpose of doing voters registrations. What do they do with a newly registered voter who doesn't register Democrat -- do they throw that registration away? Nobody's asking that one. Bottom line here is who knew that these groups were getting a little slice for themselves as they claimed to be selflessly civic-minded groups out registering voters for "democracy"?

They had such a strong interest in gathering that data from those voter registrations, perhaps a money-stream is involved here, that they took the matter to court. Foreigners collecting U.S. voter registrations, and foreigners collecting personal data from them before turning those registrations in to the official registrar of voters.

The foreign character listed in the case was a man from an NGO called "Mi Vecino" who is from El Salvador and apparently a legal resident.

But this case itself involves all foreigners, not just those with legal status to live here and who by their very lack of citizenship status have effectively expressed that their loyalty is to El Salvador and its interests, not the U.S.

It may not seem like much that the designated foreigner is a Salvadoran, given the small size of his country.

But that's a camel's nose under the tent. Remember: this is the age of China setting up police stations on U.S. sovereign land -- so what's to stop China from muscling voter registrations from Chinese refugees who can vote -- and collecting all of their data for their social credit system -- and then making sure that these voters vote with China's interests in the coming U.S. election? Anyone who thinks China is incapable of that, given its record, is dreaming.

All kinds of horrible countries with interests at odds with ours could be doing the same thing.

Would this mean that the United Nations can come in and collect voter registrations from Americans and mine their data, too? Don't bet on that not happening.

Even from the perspective of internatinal law, this seems absurd: Would the nation of El Salvador, or for that matter, China, be happy to see Big Gringo come into their country and start to register voters?

Besides registering voters, the ruling could also be applied to ballot-harvesting, which is increasingly common in the states in this age of low-confidence elections. We already know that illegals are blithely harvesting ballots in California as their way of proxy-voting. I wrote about that here.

Which makes me think this temporary injunction, which the judge says is not his final ruling, will come to naught. Not from him, of course -- it's obvious enough how he's going to rule unless he gets some signal from the Democrats to forego a coming bad ruling.

But it should be overturned on appeal. Elections for U.S. office are for citizens and citizens alone. Allowing any foreigners in as key cogs in the process is a bona fide violation of U.S. sovereignty. If this isn't overturned, we are done as a country.

Image: John Hood/CalTrans, via Wikipedia // public domain