Trump Order Seeks to Restrict Mail-In Voting, Exceeding Authority, Experts Say

President Trump issued an executive order restricting mail-in voting and directing federal agencies to share data for voter roll purges. Election law experts say the move exceeds presidential authority and will face immediate legal challenges.

President Donald Trump signed an executive order Tuesday that seeks to impose sweeping restrictions on mail-in voting and compel federal agencies to share data for compiling voter eligibility lists, a move that election law experts say exceeds the president's constitutional authority and is certain to face immediate legal challenges.

The order, titled "Ensuring Election Integrity," directs the Department of Homeland Security, the Social Security Administration and other federal agencies to provide state election officials with data to help identify noncitizens on voter rolls. It also calls for limiting the use of mail-in voting to voters with specific exemptions, including active military personnel and those living abroad.

"This is about protecting the sacred right to vote," Trump said at a signing ceremony. "For too long, our elections have been vulnerable to fraud. We are closing the loopholes."

Election law experts and voting rights advocates immediately condemned the order, noting that the Constitution grants states the primary authority to administer elections. Congress has the power to set certain uniform rules, but the president does not.

"This is not how American elections work," said Richard Hasen, an election law professor at the University of California, Irvine. "The president does not have the power to dictate how states run their elections. This order is an attempt to rewrite federal law through executive fiat, and it will not survive legal scrutiny."

The order also directs the attorney general to prioritize enforcement of federal laws prohibiting noncitizen voting and to "ensure" that states remove noncitizens from their rolls. Critics note that noncitizen voting is already illegal and exceedingly rare, with studies finding it accounts for a tiny fraction of votes cast.

As President Trump issues an executive order reshaping mail-in voting rules, The Silicon Review examines the constitutional questions at the heart of the debate and whether the latest battle over election administration will end in the courts, where similar efforts have foundered before.