Since returning to office, Trump has taken multiple executive actions related to elections and campaign spending, with Democrats challenging his moves in court. Meanwhile, House Republicans have passed legislation to address one of his priorities: noncitizen voting.
On March 25, the president issued an executive order outlining new federal actions, including making available Social Security database information for states to verify voter eligibility and directing Attorney General Pamela Bondi to “take appropriate action” against states that “fail to comply with the list maintenance requirements of the National Voter Registration Act and the Help America Vote Act.”
The order also takes aim at the practice of counting mail ballots received after Election Day. Many states require that ballots only be postmarked by Election Day. But a fact sheet accompanying the order called on the attorney general to “take appropriate action against states that count ballots received after Election Day in Federal elections. Federal election funding will be conditioned on compliance.”
But as with many of the president’s moves, federal court challenges and constitutional questions abound. On April 25, a federal judge in Washington, D.C., put on hold key provisions of Trump’s order, including a directive to the Election Assistance Commission to make changes to the national mail voter registration form to require proof of citizenship.
“The President is free to state his views about what policies he believes that Congress, the EAC, or other federal agencies should consider or adopt,” Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly wrote. “But, in this case, the President has done much more than state his views: He has issued an ‘Order’ directing that an independent commission ‘shall’ act to ‘require’ changes to an important document, the contents of which Congress has tightly regulated.”…