Trump’s new elections executive order and what it would mean for voters

Voters will flock to the polls in mere months to decide who controls the balance of power in Congress, with many state and local elections taking place as well. Ensuring our elections are accessible and fair remains paramount as the nation grapples with many changes, including a recent executive action from the Trump administration.

President Donald Trump in late March signed the second elections-related executive order of his second term, again attempting what many legal and election experts consider a serious overreach of executive authority. Key provisions of his first elections-related executive order from 2025 have already been blocked by federal courts. Similarly, this new executive order—“Ensuring Citizenship Verification and Integrity in Federal Elections”—raises legal concerns, questions about implementation and feasibility, and clear risk of disenfranchisement. Notably, some legal experts suggest that the executive order is not intended to go into effect nor win in court, but rather to undermine confidence in the electoral system.

Moments before he signed the new executive order, Trump said, “This was a meeting set up … having to do with voter integrity and mail-in ballots and stopping the massive cheating that’s gone on.” That purported basis is unsupported by the evidence, including our analysis from late last year that finds that mail voting fraud is negligible. Following the president’s elections-related executive order in March 2025 and his announcement last August of a forthcoming voting-related executive order, we examined hundreds of mail voting cases cross-referenced with election statutes across the 2016, 2018, 2020, and 2022 general elections.

In our analysis, we found the total mail voting fraud percentage was minuscule, at only 0.000043% or approximately four cases per 10 million mail votes. We also determined that universal vote-by-mail systems had the lowest level of already negligible fraud. Mail voting was used by nearly one-third of voters in the 2024 general election, and substantial state and federal safeguards are in place that make voting by mail secure.

Just over a year ago, we wrote about Trump’s first elections-focused executive order of his second term, arguing that it represented considerable legal concerns and executive overreach. Under the Elections Clause of the Constitution, federal elections fall under the authority of states and Congress.

In a ruling this January, federal D.C. District Court Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly declared that elements of that first elections-focused executive order “cannot lawfully be implemented”—specifically those “purporting to impose new requirements for verifying the U.S. citizenship of people registering to vote or applying to receive absentee ballots.” Judge Kollar-Kotelly also wrote: “Put simply, our Constitution does not allow the President to impose unilateral changes to federal election procedures.” The implementation of certain provisions of the executive order has been blocked in three federal courts as of mid-April 2026, though litigation is ongoing.

This new executive order purports to establish several elections-related provisions: directing the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in coordination with the Social Security Administration (SSA) to transmit to each state’s election official a list of confirmed U.S. citizens above age 18 who maintain a residence in the state by the time of an upcoming federal election; directing the United States Postal Service (USPS) to initiate a proposed rulemaking regarding the transmission of mail ballots; and instructing the attorney general to investigate and potentially prosecute those involved in issuing or providing ballots to those deemed to be ineligible to vote.

The executive order seeks to establish the development of a “State Citizenship List” that would be sent to each state’s chief election official 60 days prior to each regularly scheduled federal election. The executive order also directs USPS to begin a proposed rulemaking under which states may indicate to USPS at least 90 days before a federal election if a state intends to transmit mail ballots through USPS. In practice, if a state indicates it will allow mail voting, it would also need to provide a list 60 days before the election. Notably, in the 2024 general election, USPS “delivered at least 99.22 million ballots to or from voters” between September 1 and November 15, a period that includes the 65 days prior to and 10 days after that election. Because federal law requires voter registration to be open until at minimum 30 days prior to elections, and many states allow registration even closer to Election Day, the executive order’s proposed change risks disruptions to many eligible voters whose ballots are requested within the legal window but after the executive order’s proposed cutoff.

While we will need to wait and see the outcome of the five suits filed so far challenging this new executive order,¹ one can reasonably infer from the Elections Clause and from Judge Kollar-Kotelly and other federal judges’ rulings on the first order that this new executive order, or at least large portions of it, will likely meet the same fate.

Though legal challenges to the executive order are likely to succeed, the executive order nonetheless raises concerns, many of which have been highlighted in recently filed lawsuits. For example, through the executive order, the president seeks to provide directives to USPS. However, USPS is an independent establishment directed by a board of governors. Legal experts have noted that this move is outside the scope of the president’s executive power and contend that USPS lacks the authority to carry out the order’s mandates. United States code establishes USPS as a “basic and fundamental service,” one obligated to serve all Americans—not as a voter screening mechanism. The executive order risks turning USPS, a public service institution, into a partisan instrument.

In addition to the numerous legal concerns surrounding the order, attempting rapid implementation is likely infeasible, would sow chaos, and could impose a significant cost on election administrators and taxpayers. Charles Stewart III, founding director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Election Data and Science Lab, emphasized that a successful implementation of the executive order’s provisions would take multiple years and require obtaining substantial sums of federal funding. Election officials already face strains and fear for their safety, which contributes to an already reduced and overworked election workforce.

Beyond undermining the cost savings that mail voting can provide, particularly in universal-vote-by-mail states,² the executive order would require states to more than double their voting records retention periods and devote increased time and limited resources to new infrastructure for voter access and education.

With midterm elections fast approaching, the director of the Safeguarding Democracy Project at UCLA School of Law, Richard Hasen, noted that the executive order’s rulemaking and procedural requirements would be “virtually impossible to implement in time for November’s elections.” Part of the challenge stems from the extensive rulemaking process.

Even if implementation were feasible, there are nonetheless known flaws in the main databases that would be utilized to make the broader proposed voter list, which has and could continue to cause misidentification of voters and risks of disenfranchisement. The DHS’s Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) has been shown to make errors that misidentify voters as noncitizens, with an error rate of 14% in one Texas county. The Office of the General Counsel for the SSA acknowledged that “While SSA records provide an indication of citizenship, they do not provide definitive information on U.S. citizenship,” and that “the citizenship [information] SSA maintains merely represents a snapshot of the individual’s citizenship status at the time of their interaction with SSA.” People may also be missing from the database altogether. Since citizenship data only started being collected more consistently in 1981, some older citizens may be missing, and some citizens born outside of hospitals or outside the country to U.S. parents may also not be in the database. Using flawed source databases to create a new database will likely compound errors.

Voting in the U.S. has a long history of racial, economic, and gender-based discrimination. While advancements have been made, it is important to acknowledge that many communities continue to face barriers to the polls. Access to mail voting is particularly important due to its impact on various communities.

• The executive order could compound voting challenges and fears for voters of color, particularly as mail voting can lower some barriers for people of color.
• For rural voters, decreased mail voting access could pose a significant challenge. One study published in the American Economic Journal showed that each additional mile from a polling location decreased the likelihood of voting in person by 1 to 3 percentage points, with mail voting operating as a substitute when accessible.
• Voters with disabilities, who make up nearly one-sixth of the electorate in 2020, could likely be affected by this executive order. Disabled voters in the U.S. often face accessibility challenges at in-person polling places. Policies that advance easier mail voting can help address the disability turnout gap.
• Older voters could also face significant barriers under this executive order. In the 2024 general election, voters over 65 were “most likely to vote by mail.”
• While mail voting can pose documentation barriers to transgender, nonbinary, and gender-expansive individuals, Ash Lazarus Orr from Advocates for Trans Equality explains that mail voting offers an alternative that can feel safer than encountering intimidation or disrespect at in-person polling locations.

As the executive order winds its way through the courts and with elections fast approaching, several voting rights organizations advise voters to take preemptive and concrete steps to best protect their ability to participate in the 2026 midterms and elections to come.

Steps can include being familiar with state voting rules and making a voting plan. Organizations like Vote.org have also compiled a compendium of resources, including polling place locators, voting registration and registration verification, guides to local ballot issues, and ballot status tracking. There are also resources for voters who have changed their name since last registering, multi-lingual guides for immigrants who are eligible to vote, information for older adults and people with disabilities, and available free assistance for those lacking documentation.

As we detailed in the 2025 Democracy Playbook, our democracy rests on the critical pillar of safe, free, and fair elections. Regardless of the outcomes of the litigation around this order, pro-democracy actors continue to strive for equitable, accessible, and secure elections across the country.