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President Donald Trump, frustrated by the Senate stalemate on the SAVE America Act, has moved via executive order to create a nationwide list of verified eligible voters and to restrict mail-in voting, a move that swiftly drew legal threats from Democrats.
“I don’t see how they can challenge it,” Trump said at Wednesday night’s Oval Office signing, admitting, “maybe it’ll be tested.”
“I believe it’s foolproof.”
Arizona, California and Oregon, states that widely offer mail-in voting, immediately pledged to sue the Trump administration, but Colorado, Hawaii, Maine, Minnesota, Nevada, Utah, Vermont, Washington state, Washington, D.C., and Wisconsin could follow suit.
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President Donald Trump acknowledges the likelihood of legal objections to his executive order on mail-in voting. (Brendan SMIALOWSKI / AFP via Getty Images)
“The President wants to limit which Americans can participate in our democracy,” California Democrat Gov. Gavin Newsom wrote on X.
“We’re challenging it,” he added. “See you in court.”
Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes said the state’s vote-by-mail system is now used by 80% of voters, adding Arizona does not need the federal government to tell it who can vote and arguing federal data is not always reliable.
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“It is just wrongheaded for a president of the United States to pretend like he can pick his own voters,” Fontes, a Democrat, told The Associated Press. “That’s just not how America works.”
It is yet another battleground for Trump versus blue on the U.S. map ahead of the 2026 midterms. Republicans will fight to maintain razor-thin majorities in the House (217-214 currently, with one GOP-caucusing independent) and Senate (53-45, with two independents caucusing with Democrats).
“The cheating on mail-in voting is legendary,” Trump said after signing the order in the Oval Office on Wednesday night. “It’s horrible what’s going on.
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“I think this will help a lot with elections.”
California Democrat Gov. Gavin Newsom immediately issued a “see you in court” after President Donald Trump’s election integrity executive order Tuesday night. (Tayfun Coskun/Getty Images)
Trump won 30 states outright in 2024, compared to former Vice President Kamala Harris’ 18 (19, when including Washington, D.C.). Maine and Nevada split their Electoral College votes.
Trump won Nevada and Utah, two universal mail-in voting states. Nevada is a battleground state, while Utah is generally reliably red.
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Among the states won by Harris, New Hampshire is the only one that generally requires a specific reason (such as illness or absence) to vote by mail.
“This is a massive and unconstitutional voter suppression effort aimed at giving Trump the power to create a list of who is allowed to vote by mail,” Democrat election lawyer Marc Elias, who was an election integrity attack dog for both former President Joe Biden and Harris, wrote immediately on X.
“We know where this will go — the targeting of Democrats for mass disenfranchisement.
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“We will sue and we will win.”
Democrat election lawyer Marc Elias has been suing Donald Trump for years. (David Jolkovski for The Washington Post)
New Jersey, Maryland, Illinois and Minnesota have “Permanent Absentee” lists where, once you sign up, you are automatically mailed a ballot for every future election. New York, Virginia, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New Mexico and Delaware have standard no-excuse needed mail-in voting.
Any of those states also stand to object, but Trump said he is prepared for the legal wrangling.
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“They’ll probably challenge it,” he said. “You find a rogue judge — a lot of rogue judges. Very bad, bad people. Very bad judges. And hopefully we’ll win on appeal if it is.”
Trump’s order directs the Department of Homeland Security, working with the Social Security Administration, to compile lists of eligible voters in each state and seeks to block the U.S. Postal Service from delivering absentee ballots to voters not on state-approved rolls. It also calls for ballot envelopes with unique tracking barcodes and threatens to withhold federal funding from states and localities that do not comply.
“Not only is his order unconstitutional, it’s unserious,” NAACP President Derrick Johnson told Reuters in a statement. “This order will not stand.”
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Legal experts said the order is likely to face immediate constitutional challenges because election administration is largely left to the states, not the president.
“This executive order is plainly unauthorized and unlawful,” Brennan Center for Justice Vice President at New York University Wendy Weiser told The Washington Post.
AP reported that Oregon, Arizona, Maine and Nevada were among the Democrat-led states where top officials either threatened lawsuits or said they would not comply:
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Oregon: “We don’t need decrees from Washington, D.C.,” Secretary of State Tobias Read, a Democrat, said. “My message to the President: We’ll see you in court.” Oregon Attorney General Dan Rayfield, also a Democrat, added that the state would “use every legal tool available to us to fight this and protect Oregonians’ right to vote.”
Arizona: Fontes, in addition to his comments above, added, “We will not let this stand.”
Maine: Secretary of State Shenna Bellows, a Democrat, called the order “laughably unconstitutional” and said Maine would not comply. More than a quarter of Maine voters cast mail-in ballots in the 2024 election.
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Nevada: Secretary of State Francisco Aguilar, the lone Democrat in a state won by Trump in 2024, said the order would burden local election officials and “doesn’t benefit anybody in this country except himself.”
The latest order follows Trump’s broader push to reshape election rules from Washington. A March 2025 executive order that sought major changes to voter registration and mailed-ballot rules was largely blocked in court after lawsuits from voting-rights groups and Democrat state attorneys general.
“The president has no authority to regulate elections,” Weiser told the Post. “He tried to do something like this a year ago.
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“We and others actually sued. We won. We expect the same result this time.”
Election-law specialists say Tuesday’s order is vulnerable for many of the same reasons.
David Becker, a former Justice Department lawyer who now leads the Center for Election Innovation and Research, said the Constitution is clear that the president does not control state-run elections.
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The order was “clearly unconstitutional” and would be blocked immediately, Becker wrote on social media, adding Trump “might as well sign an EO banning gravity.”
Becker also noted the Postal Service is governed by a board of governors, limiting the president’s authority to dictate what mail it can carry.
“There’s no authority for any of this,” UCLA Safeguarding Democracy Project Director Richard Hasen told the Post, adding the order would be unenforceable in time for the midterm elections.
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It is “just a fantasy,” Hasen concluded. “That’s why I think this isn’t serious.”
The order also revives concerns about the federal SAVE system, which voting-rights advocates have criticized as unreliable and prone to errors that could affect eligible voters.
At least one Republican elections official on Tuesday defended the SAVE system while downplaying the potential of widespread voter fraud.
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Robert Sinners, a spokesperson for Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger — who stood firmly against Trump’s 2020 presidential election integrity investigation — said their recommendations to the Trump administration have strengthened voter verification and stressed that “the small number flagged as potential noncitizens cannot vote by mail or in person until they provide proof of citizenship.”
“The executive order will be decided in court, but in Georgia, we already verify citizenship and will continue to do so regardless of the outcome,” Sinners added.
The Brennan Center and other groups have warned that using federal databases to police state voter rolls can create mistakes, privacy concerns and barriers for lawful voters.
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“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,” Fontes told The New York Times.
“So this is a big, giant waste of time, and it’s an attention grab from the Trump administration.”
Trump vehemently disagrees, despite using mail-in voting himself last month.
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“Yeah, I did,” Trump shot back at a reporter Thursday. “You know what? Because I’m president of the United States.”
“And because of the fact that I’m president of the United States, I did a mail-in ballot for elections that took place in Florida because I felt I should be here instead of being in the beautiful sunshine.”
“You know, we have exceptions for mail-in ballots,” Trump said. “You do know that, right? So if you’re away, you have an exception. If you’re in the military, we have an exception. If you’re on a business trip, we have an exception. If you’re disabled, we have an exception. And if you’re ill, if you’re not feeling good.
“So I was away mostly in Washington, D.C., so I used a mail-in ballot.”
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Trump frequently invokes the critical 2005 findings of the Carter-Baker Commission, which warned about the election integrity vulnerabilities of mail-in voting.
Reuters and AP contributed to this report.
