A federal judge is weighing the legality of President Donald Trump’s executive order that aims to significantly restrict access to mail-in voting, after a coalition of major Democratic groups sued to block it.
U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols will hear arguments Thursday in a trio of lawsuits challenging the president’s mail-in ballot executive order. The lawsuits were brought by major Democratic groups, including the Democratic National Committee, as well as civil rights groups including the NAACP and the League of United Latin American Citizens. They all seek to block the order from taking effect.
In the suits, the groups argue that they will be “harmed by the President’s unlawful attempts to upturn the electoral playing field in his own favor and against political rivals.”
The executive order signed on March 31 directs the Department of Homeland Security to create a list of U.S. citizens who are eligible to vote in each state using data provided by the Social Security Administration. DHS would then submit that list to each state’s top election official. States must then submit a list of their eligible voters to the U.S. Postal Service ahead of the election. USPS could only deliver mail-in ballots to those individuals whose names appear on the list compiled by DHS.
Effectively, the order allows the federal government to dictate who can vote by mail and creates a centralized database of qualified voters — something the plaintiffs in this case have characterized as “Big Brother.”
If states do not comply with these actions, they could face consequences, including having the federal government withhold critical funding. The plaintiffs in this case argue that this order is an unconstitutional overstep of authority.
“The Constitution is clear, the statutes that Congress has passed is clear,” said Lali Madduri, a partner at Elias Law Group, who is arguing the case. “The president just doesn’t have the power to do what he’s trying to do.”
The Constitution’s elections clause says states run federal elections, but Congress can override those powers by passing a law. The president has no explicit role in election management.
Madduri added that the Trump executive order is a “pretty major power grab.”
“He’s trying to wield the force of the federal government to control elections, to prevent the opposition party from getting a chance at a fair election,” she said.
Lawyers for the Trump administration argue that the litigation is premature but say that the order is meant to protect the integrity of elections. “Nobody has an interest in widespread, haphazard, or unlawful disenfranchisement of eligible U.S. citizen voters,” the government argues in its brief.
Trump has publicly expressed his desire to rewrite election laws for his party’s benefit. He pushed the point earlier this year at a rally to promote the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act, or SAVE, a proposed law with many similarities to the executive order, including a proof of citizenship requirement.
“We’ll never lose a race for 50 years. We won’t lose a race,” Trump said. “We want voter ID. We want proof of citizenship. And we don’t want mail-in ballots.”
“But that is not what the executive order aims to do and, more importantly here, that is certainly not how agencies intend to implement it.”
Critics worry that is exactly what the order would do. They claim that citizenship lists would rely on incomplete and unreliable federal data sources, which could restrict eligible citizens from voting by mail.
While the order appears to primarily target noncitizens, another key group of voters could be vulnerable under this framework: anyone who changes their name after marriage.
If a citizen changes their surname after getting married, they must update that information across multiple state and federal agencies. If their state voter registration has their updated name but the Social Security Administration does not, the apparent mismatch could disqualify that person from the eligible voters list. That possibility concerns Madduri, especially as it largely affects women, a key voting bloc.
“There’s a real potential to affect a really broad swath of people with a huge disproportionate effect on women,” she said.
Last year, Trump signed a separate executive order that tried to require proof of citizenship on federal mail voter registration forms. That order was struck down by multiple courts, including the D.C. District Court.
The cases before Nichols today are just a few of the multiple challenges to the president’s order. A coalition of 23 Democratic-led states and the League of Women Voters have filed similar suits in federal court in Massachusetts.
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