Trump signs executive order that will upend US voter registration processes

Donald Trump has signed a far-reaching executive order that promises to fundamentally disrupt American voter registration processes, introducing measures so restrictive they could in effect disenfranchise millions of citizens if enacted.

Described by Will Scharf, the White House staff secretary, on Tuesday as “the farthest reaching executive action taken” in the nation’s history, the order represents the latest in a long list of assaults against immigration, but also on current voting systems.

The sweeping order amends the federal voter registration form to require proof of citizenship in order to vote. It demands documentary proof for citizenship such as a passport to be eligible to vote in federal elections, empowers federal agencies to cut funding to states deemed non-compliant and instructs the Department of Justice to prosecute what the White House paints as “election crimes”.

The measure also seeks to block states from accepting mail-in ballots after election day, regardless of when they are mailed in.

Many of the provisions in the order are likely to be quickly challenged and are legally suspect. The US constitution explicitly gives states and Congress the authority to set the rules for election and does not authorize the president to do so.

“The short answer is that this executive order, like all too many that we’ve seen before, is lawless and asserts all sorts of executive authority that he most assuredly does not have,” said Danielle Lang, a voting rights lawyer at the non-profit Campaign Legal Center.

Republicans have long sought to add a citizenship to the federal form and been stymied by the courts. In a 7-2 decision in 2013, for example, the US supreme court said that Arizona could not require proof of citizenship to vote in federal elections. The power to set the requirements on the federal form is left to the bipartisan Election Assistance Commission. Courts have also blocked efforts to short-circuit efforts to add the question.

The order tracks with a controversial bill in Congress Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (Save) Act, which would require Americans to prove citizenship in person – a requirement that could immediately eliminate mail-in and online voter registration already across 42 states, as well as DC and Guam.

All metrics point to these actions making it harder, not easier, for Americans to vote. According to the state department in 2023, fewer than half of all Americans had a valid passport, and nearly 69 million women who have changed their names would struggle to produce matching documentation, according to a Center for American Progress analysis.

Kansas had a law requiring proof of citizenship in effect between 2013 and 2016. It wound up putting the registrations of 30,000 people in jeopardy – the vast majority of whom were eligible to vote.

The Center for Democracy and Civic Engagement reported in 2024 that roughly 21 million voting-age Americans, about 9% of the population, do not have a current, valid ID.

Despite Trump’s claims of widespread election fraud, federal law already prohibits non-citizens from voting, with penalties including up to five years in prison. Current election systems already use multiple federal databases to verify voter eligibility, including citizenship data from the Department of Homeland Security.

A day after the 2024 elections, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (Cisa) director, Jen Easterly – the agency in charge of overseeing election security in the United States – said: “Our election infrastructure has never been more secure and the election community never better prepared to deliver safe, secure, free and fair elections for the American people.

“Importantly, we have no evidence of any malicious activity that had a material impact on the security or integrity of our election infrastructure,” Easterly added.

Still, Trump framed the order as a critical step in “straightening out our election”, claiming the country is “sick” from what he termed “fake elections.” He added that “there are other steps that we will be taking as the next in the coming weeks” when it comes to the electoral process.

This action continues Trump’s long-term efforts to reshape democratic participation, a throwback to his 2020 memo to exclude non-citizens from census population counts that would be used to shape congressional districts. The rhetoric and subsequent follow through represents a potentially transformative – and deeply controversial – approach to voter eligibility that could redefine access to the ballot box.

“Perhaps some people think I shouldn’t be complaining because we won in a landslide, but we got to straighten out our election,” Trump said as he signed Tuesday’s order.