The Obama administration’s contempt for fair and honest elections has been laid bare.

On Feb. 12, the League of Women Voters, the NAACP, Project Vote and other well-funded leftist organizations filed suit) against the U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC) and Executive Director Brian Newby seeking to reverse Newby’s decision to allow Kansas, Arizona, Georgia and Alabama to use voter registration forms requiring proof of citizenship. In other words, these groups are fighting efforts to maintain the integrity of the voting process and keep non-citizens from voting. Even worse, Barack Obama’s Department of Justice (DOJ) is lending its support to the effort, based on the tiresome trope that obtaining such documentation creates a “barrier” for poor, minority and elderly voters.

According to federal law, the EAC is responsible for making the federal voter-registration form compliant with the requirements laid out in the National Voter Registration Act of 1993, (NRVA) a.k.a. Motor Voter Act. States are required to register voters who use the federal form, but they can also ask the EAC to include additional instructions on that form about state requirements. Both Article I, Section 2 of the Constitution and the 17th Amendment make it clear that the “electors in each state shall have the qualifications requisite for electors.”

Nonetheless, the Left’s efforts to diminish states’ rights with regard to voting met with some initial success in 2013. A suit filed by the League of Women Voters, People for the American Way, Common Cause, Project Vote, and Chicanos for La Causa against the state of Arizona, which also wanted to include citizen verification as part of its election law, ended up in the Supreme Court. In Arizona v. Inter Tribal Council of Arizona, SCOTUS ruled 7-2 that Arizona couldn’t do so unless and until the EAC agreed to change the form and include Arizona’s additional requirements.

Arizona had made that request previously in 2005, but a 2-2 vote by the EAC’s four commissioners yielded no change. In his majority opinion, Antonin Scalia noted there was nothing stopping Arizona from renewing its request, noting further that if the agency refuses or “its inaction persists,” the state could sue the EAC to establish in court that “a mere oath will not suffice to effectuate its citizenship requirement and that the EAC is therefore under a non-discretionary duty to include Arizona’s concrete evidence requirement on the Federal Form.” Scalia added that Arizona could further characterize an EAC refusal as “arbitrary” because it had accepted similar instructions proposed by Louisiana.

Arizona did ask again and was turned down again, by a single EAC bureaucrat named Alice Miller who was not a commissioner, but the acting executive director. The Heritage Foundation’s Hans A. Spakovsky reveals the possibly illegal machinations behind the move, noting that his sources inside the DOJ tell him it was “partisan, left-wing lawyers in the Voting Section of the Civil Rights Division at the Justice Department who actually drafted the denial letter.” If that’s the case, the ostensible political impartiality of the EAC has been compromised by what Spakovsky explains is the same “cadre of lawyers that dismissed a voter-intimidation charge against members of the New Black Panther Party who physically threatened voters in Philadelphia to help President Barack Obama get elected in 2008; that has waged a war on voter ID and other election-integrity measures; and that has refused to enforce the Voting Rights Act in a race-neutral manner as called for by the plain text of the statute.”

He further notes the same lawyers went to federal court in 2014 to prevent Kansas from enacting a similar registration requirement. The group included radical leftist lawyer Bradley Heard who tweeted the judge’s impressions of the case, despite the realty the DOJ lawyers are forbidden to do so. Spakovsky notes his sources tell him Heard is also the lawyer who wrote the EAC’s rejection letter in both the Arizona and Kansas cases.

Kansas asked to intervene in the current suit, citing the same allegations. Regardless, following the EAC’s re-establishment of a quorum, Newby issued a directive on Jan. 29 allowing Kansas, Alabama and Georgia to add the proof of citizenship requirements to their registration forms.

The most stunning aspect of the current lawsuit, in which the aforementioned plaintiffs were seeking a temporary restraining order and a preliminary injunction against the EAC’s decision, was the stance taken by DOJ. That agency is supposed to defend the actions of the EAC. Yet in this case it sided with the plaintiffs, asking U.S. District Judge Richard Leon to issue the injunction.

A hearing on the matter took place Monday, and Judge Leon was not amused by this Orwellian turn of events, characterizing the DOJ’s actions as “unprecedented,” “extraordinary” and something he had never seen in all his years on the bench. Prior to the hearing he approved motions by Kansas and the Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF) to side with the EAC, giving Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach and PLIF attorney J. Christian Adams standing before the court.

Leon then read into the record the astounding letter he received from EAC chairman Christie McCormick. It informed the court the DOJ would not only refuse to defend the EAC, but also not allow the commission to hire its own attorneys.

During the hearing, Leon chastised the DOJ for filing an incomplete brief, and other plaintiff attorneys for mistakes and errors that included being unfamiliar with the voting requirements for the upcoming primaries in Georgia, Alabama and Kansas. A compelling argument in favor of the proof of citizenship requirements was made by Kansas Secretary of State Kobach. He provided evidence of non-citizens voting in his state, and further explained that people registering to vote at the Department of Motor Vehicles — despite not being citizens — is a common occurrence in his state and a “huge problem all across the U.S.”

The hearing ended with Leon announcing he would make a decision on the temporary restraining order Tuesday, and hold another hearing on the preliminary injunction on March 9. While the judge left the record open for supplemental pleadings and requests for limited discovery to be filed, Spakovsky suspects the DOJ will avoid any discovery that might engender disclosures about its possible interference with the internal workings of what is supposed to be an independent, bipartisan EAC.

On Tuesday, in a victory for the EAC, Leon denied the temporary restraining order. He also warned the League of Women Voters, the NAACP and other plaintiffs that they’ll need to make a much stronger case at the hearing in March to win an injunction.

Thus, the ultimate outcome remains undetermined. But a story emanating out of New York City should make the American Left’s long-term intentions clear. “New legislation is being pushed that would give illegal aliens the right to vote in New York City’s 2017 elections for mayor, comptroller, public advocate, borough president and City Council,” the New York Post reported Monday.

If these radicals prevail, a substantial portion of the Big Apple’s 500,000 illegal aliens will be granted the foremost privilege of citizenship.

Make no mistake: this litigation, plus the maddening maintenance of open borders, the dispersal of illegals throughout the nation following three years of a border “surge,” the push for immigration “reform” rather than enforcement of existing law, and Obama’s executive actions bypassing Congress to grant legal status to millions of so-called Dreamers, are all part of a comprehensive strategy aimed at putting millions of illegals on a pathway to citizenship so they can eventually vote. Yet as New York City and the Obama administration indicate, even “eventually” or “legal” aren’t good enough for an American Left determined to seize and maintain power — by any means necessary.