Trump Signs Executive Orders Targeting Mail-In Voting and Federal Voter Registration

On March 31, 2026, President Donald Trump signed an executive order titled "Ensuring Citizenship Verification and Integrity in Federal Elections," directing the federal government to create state-by-state citizenship lists and place the U.S. Postal Service at the center of mail ballot delivery [1][2]. The order represents the most aggressive assertion of presidential authority over election administration in modern American history — and arrives with a track record of judicial defeat already attached to its predecessor.

Within minutes of the signing, election officials in Oregon and Arizona pledged to sue [3]. Fifteen states and the District of Columbia have already successfully blocked major provisions of a similar executive order Trump signed in March 2025 [4]. The new order escalates the fight, with direct threats of federal funding cuts to noncompliant states and instructions to the Attorney General to prosecute election officials who send ballots to ineligible voters [2][5].

What the Orders Actually Require

The executive order contains two primary directives [6].

Federal Citizenship Lists. The Secretary of Homeland Security, coordinating with the Social Security Administration, must compile and transmit to each state a "State Citizenship List" of confirmed U.S. citizens who are 18 or older and reside in that state. The lists draw from federal citizenship and naturalization records, SSA databases, and the SAVE (Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements) program [6]. These lists must be updated and transmitted to state election officials no fewer than 60 days before each regularly scheduled federal election.

USPS Mail Ballot Controls. States must send the U.S. Postal Service a list of voters "to whom the State intends to provide a mail-in or absentee ballot" 60 days before any federal election [2]. The Postal Service would then create "unique ballot envelope identifiers, such as bar codes" for those voters and would only be authorized to deliver ballots to people on the approved list [1][2].

The order invokes the Help America Vote Act of 2002, the National Voter Registration Act of 1993, Articles II and IV of the Constitution, and several criminal statutes [6]. The White House described the order as "legally foolproof" [1].

The Constitutional Question: Who Runs Elections?

The U.S. Constitution assigns election administration to the states, with Congress — not the president — holding the power to override state election rules through the Elections Clause in Article I, Section 4 [1][7]. This is not an abstract legal distinction. Federal courts have already ruled on it repeatedly.

The March 2025 executive order (EO 14248, "Preserving and Protecting the Integrity of American Elections") has been substantially dismantled through litigation [4][8]. Three federal courts found its passport requirement for voter registration unconstitutional [4]. A federal judge permanently blocked the provision in October 2025 in League of Women Voters Education Fund v. Trump [9]. By January 2026, U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly had issued a permanent injunction against the order's directive requiring federal agencies to assess citizenship before providing voter registration forms [4].

As Danielle Lang, vice president for voting rights at the Campaign Legal Center, stated: "The president has no power to direct the creation of any of these lists or to restrict the delivery of mail ballots to any given list" [2].

Election law professor Rick Hasen called the new order "likely unconstitutional" and said implementation before November 2026 is "virtually impossible" [1].

The Fraud Evidence Gap

The executive order's justification rests on claims that mail-in voting is vulnerable to fraud and that noncitizens are registering to vote. The available evidence does not support either claim at scale.

A peer-reviewed study published in Statistics and Public Policy through the American Statistical Association found that fraud rates were "statistically indistinguishable" between vote-by-mail and non-vote-by-mail states [10]. The Brookings Institution calculated that documented cases of mail-in voting fraud account for roughly 0.000043% of all ballots cast by mail — approximately four cases per 10 million ballots [11]. The Brennan Center for Justice found fraud incident rates between 0.0003% and 0.0025% across elections that were studied in detail [12].

On noncitizen voting, the Heritage Foundation — the conservative think tank whose election fraud database the administration frequently cites — has documented just 68 total cases of noncitizen voting going back to the 1980s [13]. Of those, only 10 involved undocumented immigrants; most involved lawful permanent residents, some of whom registered due to misinformation provided by government agencies themselves [13]. The Bipartisan Policy Center found 77 instances of noncitizen voting between 1999 and 2023, each of which faced investigation [14].

Proponents of the orders argue that these low numbers reflect detection failures, not the absence of fraud. The Heritage Foundation has warned that "the threat of non-citizen voting" remains underestimated because many jurisdictions lack the tools to systematically identify ineligible registrations [15]. The administration contends that a federal citizenship list would, for the first time, provide a reliable mechanism to cross-reference voter rolls against verified citizenship data.

Who Votes by Mail — and Who Stands to Lose Access

Nearly one in three Americans — approximately 48 million people — voted by mail in the 2024 general election, accounting for 31% of all ballots cast [16]. While this represents a decline from the pandemic-driven peak of 43.1% in 2020, it remains well above the 23.6% rate recorded in 2016 [16].

Source: U.S. Census Bureau / States United Democracy Center

Data as of Jan 15, 2025CSV

The populations most dependent on mail voting include:

Military and overseas voters. Some 905,343 votes were cast by mail by U.S. military members and citizens abroad in 2024 [16]. Among active-duty military, 86% use the U.S. mail to submit absentee ballots [17]. Federal law — the Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act — specifically protects these voters' right to mail ballots, creating a direct tension with any order restricting mail delivery.

Voters with disabilities. The Census Bureau estimates 38.3 million eligible voters had a disability in 2020, roughly one-sixth of the electorate [18]. People with disabilities voted by mail at rates about 10 percentage points higher than those without — just over 50% in 2020 compared to 44% [18].

Older voters. Voters aged 65 and older had the highest rate of mail voting in 2024, at nearly 40% [16].

Rural communities. About one in four rural voters cast mail ballots in 2024 [16]. Rep. Blake Moore, a Utah Republican, described his state's mail-in system as "exemplary" and "vital for our rural communities" [3].

The 60-day advance list requirement poses a specific problem: the "vast majority of states" allow absentee ballot requests much closer to Election Day, with some permitting requests as late as the Monday before the election [2]. Voters who move, become ill, or are deployed within that window could be excluded.

The Swing State Calculus

The impact of mail-in voting restrictions varies dramatically by state. In 2024, Oregon conducted 95% of its voting by mail; Colorado, 94%; Arizona, 73% [19][20]. By contrast, Georgia and North Carolina — states that tightened post-2020 election laws — saw just 5% of ballots cast by mail [19].

Source: States United / MIT Election Lab

Data as of Jan 15, 2025CSV

States where mail voting constitutes a large share of ballots — Arizona (73%), Nevada (42%), Pennsylvania (27%), Michigan (28%), and Wisconsin (22%) — are also among the most competitive in presidential and midterm elections [19]. Any reduction in mail ballot access in these states would disproportionately affect turnout.

Utah presents a notable case. The state conducts elections almost entirely by mail under a system built and maintained by Republican officials. The executive order contains no explicit exemption for Utah or other Republican-led all-mail states [3]. Whether the administration would pursue enforcement against allied states remains an open question.

The Federal Voter List: Data, Access, and Privacy Concerns

The order directs DHS to build citizenship lists using federal naturalization records, SSA data, and the SAVE program [6]. But these databases were not designed for election administration and contain known gaps. Naturalized citizens whose records have not been fully digitized, citizens born abroad to American parents, and people whose names differ across federal databases could all be incorrectly excluded.

A more immediate concern involves who else gets access. The Justice Department has already begun sharing voter roll data collected from states with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) as part of a separate initiative to identify noncitizens on voter rolls [21][22]. The DOJ has sued 29 states and DC to compel release of unredacted voter files, though courts in California, Michigan, and Oregon have rejected those demands [4][22].

Under the Privacy Act of 1974, the government must publish notice in the Federal Register before using personal data for new purposes and provide public comment periods. As of reporting, no such notice has been published regarding the voter data sharing arrangement between DOJ and DHS [21].

The administration has also indicated that federal grants to states should be conditioned on "total information-sharing in the context of both federal law enforcement and immigration enforcement," including access to voter registration and motor vehicle databases [21].

ERIC, Cross-State Data Sharing, and the Case for a Federal List

Proponents of the federal list point to genuine weaknesses in the current system. The 50-state patchwork of voter rolls does produce duplicate registrations — mostly from people who move and remain registered at old addresses. The Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC), a nonprofit data-sharing compact, was designed to address this [23].

ERIC cross-references voter registration data, motor vehicle records, SSA death data, and USPS change-of-address records across member states every 60 days [23]. At its peak, ERIC included 33 states. But beginning in 2023, multiple Republican-led states withdrew from ERIC after conservative activists characterized it as a partisan operation [24].

Several of those states — including Alabama, Florida, Georgia, and Texas — attempted to build replacement systems. The Alabama Voter Integrity Database (AVID) launched with 10 participating states [24]. But election administration experts have questioned whether these alternatives can match ERIC's established infrastructure and data access [24].

The administration argues that a federal list would resolve the fragmentation problem entirely. Critics counter that the proposed federal list would duplicate ERIC's function with less transparency, no state governance structure, and expanded access for law enforcement agencies whose purposes extend well beyond election integrity.

Historical Precedent: The NVRA and Federal Intervention

The most significant prior federal intervention in voter registration was the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 (NVRA), signed by President Clinton [7]. The NVRA required states to offer voter registration at motor vehicle agencies, by mail, and at public assistance offices. It applied to 44 states and DC, with six states exempted because they already had Election Day registration [7].

The NVRA was enacted by Congress — not by executive order — under the Elections Clause. It was challenged in court and survived, in part because Congress has explicit constitutional authority to regulate the "time, place, and manner" of federal elections [7]. The president does not share that authority.

The new executive order's scope exceeds the NVRA's in several respects: it creates federal databases of eligible voters (the NVRA did not), it directs a federal agency (USPS) to gatekeep ballot delivery (the NVRA did not), and it conditions state compliance on federal funding — a coercive mechanism the Supreme Court restricted in NFIB v. Sebelius (2012) [25].

Enforcement: Funding Threats and Legal Limits

The administration has stated that states refusing to comply "are at risk of losing federal funding" [5]. This raises immediate questions under the Spending Clause.

In NFIB v. Sebelius, the Supreme Court ruled that Congress could not threaten to strip all existing Medicaid funding from states that refused to expand the program under the Affordable Care Act [25]. The Court held that when conditions on federal grants amount to coercion — threatening significant, independent funding streams — they exceed Congress's spending power. The ruling established a two-part test: whether the threatened funding is significant, and whether the new condition is independent from the existing grant program [25].

Applying this standard to election funding, any attempt to revoke unrelated federal grants (highway funds, education money, law enforcement grants) as punishment for not adopting the executive order's requirements would face serious legal obstacles. The order does not specify which funding streams are at risk, leaving the enforcement mechanism legally and practically undefined.

The order also directs the Attorney General to "prioritize investigations and prosecutions" of election officials who issue ballots to ineligible voters [6]. This provision could have a chilling effect on election administrators, who must make judgment calls on ballot distribution under time pressure and with imperfect information.

What Happens Next

The order faces the same legal gauntlet that largely neutralized its predecessor. Lawsuits from Oregon and Arizona were announced within minutes of the signing [3]. The three existing federal cases challenging the 2025 order — LULAC v. Executive Office of the President, California v. Trump, and Washington v. Trump — are proceeding at both trial and appellate levels [4].

Courts have consistently held that "the Constitution gives power over federal elections to the states and Congress, not to the president" [4]. The new order does not appear to resolve the constitutional deficiency that doomed the earlier one. Rick Hasen assessed the implementation timeline bluntly: "No way" could agencies execute these changes before November 2026 [2].

The parallel legislative effort — the SAVE America Act, which would require proof of citizenship for voter registration through an act of Congress — has stalled in the Senate [3]. Whether the administration can achieve through executive action what it has failed to accomplish through legislation remains, for now, a question for the courts.