United States President Donald Trump has signed an executive order cracking down on mail-in voting, in a move that voting rights advocates have called unconstitutional.
The order will require the Department of Homeland Security to compile a list of verified U.S. citizens in each state who are eligible to vote.
The executive order will almost certainly be challenged in court, which could block it from being enforced in time for the November midterm elections.
“We want to have honest voting in our country, because if you don’t have honest voting, you can’t have, really, a nation if you want to know the truth,” Trump said in the Oval Office after signing the order.
While signing the executive order, Trump claimed that cheating with mail-in voting was “legendary”.
Repeated studies have found that documented cases of voter fraud, especially by non-citizens, are exceedingly rare.
Trump even voted by mail himself recently in Florida.
Voting-rights advocates have said that Trump’s planned restrictions on voting would disenfranchise millions of Americans.
“There’s not a single provision in here that will withstand judicial review. This is a wholly unconstitutional EO,” Center for Election Innovation executive director, David Becker, said.
The U.S. Constitution gives the president no authority over elections and expressly authorises states to set election rules.
Trump signed an executive order last year seeking to impose citizenship requirements on voter registration as well as mail-in voting restrictions on election rules that were struck down.
Not long after the order was singed Democratic officials in at least two states, where mail-in voting is popular, announced plans to sue, including in Oregon and Arizona.
“This move is nothing more than a push to weaponise the sensitive personal information of voters in this country, an effort my office will continue to fight unrelentingly,” Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes said in a statement. He said his office was working with the state attorney general, and vowed: “We will not let this order stand without a fight.”
“My message to the President: We’ll see you in court,” Tobias Read, the Democratic secretary of state in Oregon, said in a statement.
Trump has long sought to restrict mail-in voting following his loss to former President Joe Biden in 2020.
He has repeatedly claimed that the election was stolen from him due to fraud in mail-in voting, with no evidence.
This comes after Trump backed the SAVE America Act, a measure that would require Americans to show proof of citizenship to register to vote and a valid ID in order to cast a ballot.
The U.S. House voted to approve the measure in February, and the Senate debated it this month without taking a vote.
Trump has told Republicans that they will lose the November midterm elections if they don’t pass the bill and crack down on mail-in voting.
