WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump on Tuesday signed an executive order mandating states to implement stricter mail-in voting regulations and directed his administration to compile a comprehensive list of confirmed U.S. citizens who are eligible to vote in each state.
The order, his second related to elections since he retook office last year, will be quickly challenged in court. The U.S. Constitution gives states the power to set voting rules and administer their own elections, though Congress has the ability to set some regulations, too.
“That’s a big deal,” Trump said as he signed the order in the Oval Office. “I think this will help a lot with elections. We’d like to have voter ID. We’d like to have proof of citizenship, and that’ll be another subject for another time. We’re working on that. You would think it’d be easy.”
The order requests the Department of Homeland Security to compile “state citizenship lists” by merging federal citizenship and naturalization records, Social Security records, and other federal databases.
Those lists would then be sent to the states to verify their voter rolls. The USPS would be instructed to transmit ballots only to individuals listed on state citizenship lists. However, it’s unclear how the USPS, a chronically underfunded agency, would fulfill this mandate to police election mail as stipulated in the order.
Trump has persistently sought to modify the voting process in the United States, despite his repeated false assertions of winning the 2020 election.
“I won three times. I won three times convincingly,” he said Tuesday.
Democratic election lawyer Marc Elias posted on X: “If Trump signs an unconstitutional Executive Order to take over voting, we will sue. I don’t bluff and I usually win.”
Trump has also put pressure on Congress to pass the SAVE America Act, which would impose new proof-of-citizenship and voter ID requirements.
The legislation passed the House, but it has stalled in the Senate, where it needs 60 votes to advance under current chamber rules.
