President Donald Trump signed an executive order seeking to take control of elections by creating a federal database of U.S. citizens who are eligible to vote and implementing restrictions on mail-in ballots.
Trump signed the order in the Oval Office on Tuesday, acknowledging the directive is likely to face legal challenges. Under the Constitution, only Congress can pass laws related to elections and state legislatures are given the authority to conduct elections how they see fit.
“I believe it’s foolproof,” Trump said. “And maybe it’ll be tested. Maybe it won’t.”
The order is the latest attempt by Trump to crack down on the mail-in voting system, which the president has claimed for years causes widespread voter fraud and is the reason he lost the 2020 election. There is no substantial evidence that those claims are true.
The directive comes one year after Trump signed a similar order seeking to require voters to provide documentation proving their citizenship when registering to vote, an effort that has largely been blocked by the courts. The Justice Department has also sought to obtain private, unredacted voter rolls from every state in the country to create a national voter database, an attempt that has been rejected by more than two dozen states, including Utah.
But the latest effort comes as the push to crack down on voting in federal elections has been stymied in Congress. While Republican senators, including Utah Sen. Mike Lee, push forward with those efforts, it appears Trump is exploring alternative pathways through this executive order.
Here’s what the order seeks to accomplish, and whether or not those plans are feasible.
Create federal citizenship list
The first task laid out in Trump’s executive order is the creation of a “state citizenship list” that lists individuals living in the state who are eligible to vote.
The list itself does not automatically qualify someone as being registered to vote. But by combining data from the Department of Homeland Security, Social Security data, and other databases, it gives states a list of people who are eligible to register.
The list would then be sent to state election officials at least 60 days before federal elections and would need to be updated regularly.
The order would also instruct the attorney general to prioritize elections or prosecutions of election officials who send ballots to residents who are not on the lists as well as any individual involved in producing or distributing those ballots.
However, election officials have pushed back on the practicality of a federal voter list, arguing statewide databases are regularly updated each day as voters move, turn 18 years old, become naturalized citizens, or die — meaning a national list would become outdated just as soon as it’s created.
USPS create new mail-in voting system
The order also directs the U.S. Postal Service to establish a new standardized system for mail-in ballots. The national standards must be implemented within 60 days under the order and apply to both mail-in and absentee ballots.
Among the new requirements would include trackable ballot envelopes with individualized bar codes and envelopes that are clearly labeled as “official election mail.” Each envelope would also need to match USPS design and processing standards.
In compliance with the voter list requirements, states would notify USPS if they plan to utilize mail-in voting, and election officials would submit a list of eligible voters to the federal agency. USPS would maintain that list and only be permitted to process and send ballots to voters on that list.
The postal agency would work with the inspector general and the DOJ to ensure lists are up to date and crack down on any misuse of mail-in voting.
What happens if a state is accused of being noncompliant?
The executive order would be enforced by the attorney general and other related federal agencies, which would be instructed to investigate and refer cases for prosecution if election officials or contractors are found to be in violation.
The attorney general could also recommend withholding federal funding from certain states or localities that don’t comply.
Still, it’s not clear how the order could be enforced on a national scale — especially as the president does not have executive authority over elections. Some states and groups have already vowed to legally challenge the order.
“The Constitution doesn’t allow the executive to take over elections administration, that’s a job for the state legislatures or Congress, and so I don’t think this is going to pass any sort of judicial muster,” Adrian Fontes, Arizona’s secretary of state, told The New York Times. “So this is a big, giant waste of time, and it’s an attention grab from the Trump administration.”
Even Utah’s lieutenant governor, who handles the state’s elections, responded in a social media post to call the order “nonsensical.”
“POV: When the latest Executive Order reminds you of that time when you were a senior in high school and you performed in a one act play called ‘Jack or the Submission’ by absurdist playwright Eugene Ionesco and it was super weird and the script was full of nonsensical dialogue,” Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson wrote in a post on Threads.