Trump’s Order Restricting Mail-In Voting Rebuked by States

President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Tuesday to create a list of eligible voters in each state and to crack down on mail-in voting, in his latest attempt to remake U.S. elections based on unfounded claims of widespread electoral fraud.

The order, which comes just months before the November midterms, immediately drew promises of legal challenges from states and voting rights advocates. In apparent anticipation of such challenges, Trump described the order as “foolproof,” adding, “Maybe it’ll be tested. Maybe it won’t.”

Under the order, the Department of Homeland Security, in coordination with the Social Security Administration, is directed to compile a list of confirmed U.S. citizens residing in each state who will be 18 or older at the time of the upcoming federal election. It also stops the U.S. Postal Service from sending absentee ballots to any person who isn’t enrolled in the state’s mail-in or absentee voter list. Eight states—California, Colorado, Hawaii, Nevada, Oregon, Utah, Vermont, and Washington—plus Washington, D.C., send voters ballots by mail automatically without needing them to request or justify one. The President also ordered USPS to put ballots in secure envelopes with unique trackable barcodes. 

The order authorizes Attorney General Pam Bondi to investigate states and localities that give ballots to ineligible voters—and possibly prosecute local officials involved. It also threatens to withhold federal funding from noncompliant states and localities.

During the order’s signing ceremony in the Oval Office, the President repeated his since-debunked claims of widespread voter fraud through mail-in ballots, a method he used earlier this month to cast his vote in special elections in Florida. While Trump has slammed the practice, he’s indicated some exemptions are acceptable, such as for those who are ill, disabled, traveling, or in the military.

“The cheating on mail-in voting is legendary,” he said. “It’s horrible, what’s gone on. It’s very clearly covered, very, very clearly. So I think this will help a lot with elections.” 

For months, Trump’s Justice Department has been demanding voter rolls from states in what it says is an effort to ensure election integrity and transparency. The department has sued Washington, D.C., and 29 states after district and state officials refused to hand over those rolls.

The order also came as Trump has pushed Congress to pass the SAVE America Act, legislation that would require strict proof of citizenship before registering to vote and valid identification before casting ballots. While the GOP-led House passed the measure, it faces an uphill battle in the Senate.

“We’d like to have voter ID, we’d like to have proof of citizenship,” Trump said in the Oval Office. “And that’ll be another subject for another time.”

It’s not the first time Trump has resorted to executive orders to remake elections. A year ago, he issued an executive order that sought major changes to how states handle elections, parts of which have been blocked by courts. Among the parts blocked is the directive to withhold federal election funds to states that would not change their voting procedures to meet the President’s demands.

Immediate rebuke

Shortly after the order, several states spoke out against it, decrying how the President was interfering with how they ran elections. Trump has previously urged Republicans to “nationalize” elections, even when the Constitution specifically empowers states to run them.

Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes, in a video statement on social media, called the order “unconstitutional” and noted that mail-in ballots have actually been designed by Republicans and have kept the GOP in power in the state for years. He also said in a separate statement that the mail-in voting system serves 80% of Arizona’s voters and that the order was a “disgusting overreach” that showed “how little the Trump Administration understands about election administration.”

Tobias Read, the Secretary of State for Oregon, which votes exclusively by mail, called the President’s order an “illegal power grab” on social media and said, “We’ll see you in court.”

Maine’s Secretary of State Shenna Bellows said the state is not “going to obey in advance.” In 2024, more than 360,000 voters in Maine, which has about 900,000 voters, cast their ballots by mail, according to data from the University of Florida’s Election Lab.

Francisco Aguilar, the Secretary of State of Nevada, where close to 670,000 voted by mail in 2024, said in a statement that Trump “has spent years attempting to manufacture a crisis around mail voting when there is none” and that his statements only “create chaos and confusion for voters in the middle of an election year.”

Marc Elias, an attorney who founded media platform Democracy Docket, posted on social media that he plans to launch and win a legal challenge, claiming Trump’s latest order leads to “the targeting of Democrats for mass disenfranchisement.”

David Becker, executive director of the nonpartisan Center for Election Innovation & Research similarly told MS NOW that there’s no reason to panic, as Trump’s order is clearly unconstitutional. “Some may freak out about this, but honestly, this is hilarious,” Becker said. “He might as well sign an EO banning gravity.” 

—Connor Greene contributed reporting.