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President Donald Trump, frustrated by the Senate’s standoff over the SAVE America Act, has moved by executive order to create a nationwide list of eligible verified voters and restrict mail-in voting, a move that is quickly attracting legal threats from Democrats.
“I don’t see how they can challenge it,” Trump said Wednesday night in the Oval Office, acknowledging, “maybe it will be tested.”
“I believe it’s stupid.”
Arizona, California and Oregon, which say they widely offer mail-in voting, immediately pledged to sue the Trump administration, but Colorado, Hawaii, Maine, Minnesota, Nevada, Utah, Vermont, Washington, DC, and Wisconsin could follow.
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President Donald Trump acknowledges there may be legal opposition to his executive order for mail-in voting. (Brendan SMIALOWSKI / AFP via Getty Images)
“The President wants to limit which Americans can participate in our democracy,” wrote California Democrat Gov. Gavin Newsom in X.
“We challenge it,” he added. “See you in court.”
Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes said the state’s mail-in voting system is now used by 80% of voters, adding that Arizona doesn’t need the federal government to tell it who can vote, and the opposition party’s information isn’t always reliable.
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“It’s a mistake for the president of the United States to pretend he can choose voters,” Fontes, a Democrat, told the Associated Press. “That’s just not how America works.”
It is yet another battleground for Trump against the blue on the US map before the 2026 midterms. Republicans will fight to keep a razor-thin majority in the House (217-214 currently, with independent GOP-caucusing) and the Senate (53-45, with two independents opposed to Democrats).
“Mail-in voting fraud is a myth,” Trump said after signing the executive order in the Oval Office on Wednesday night. “What is happening is sad.
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“I think this will help a lot with the election.”
California Democrat Gov. Gavin Newsom quickly issued a ‘see you in court’ letter after President Donald Trump’s executive order on Tuesday night. (Tayfun Coskun/Getty Images)
Trump won a total of 30 states in 2024, compared to former Vice President Kamala Harris’ 18 (19, which includes Washington, DC). Maine and Nevada split their Electoral College votes.
Trump won Nevada and Utah, two mail-in voting states around the world. Nevada is a battleground state, while Utah is generally reliably red.
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Among the states won by Harris, New Hampshire is the only one that usually requires a specific reason (such as illness or absence) to vote by mail.
“This is a massive voter suppression and unconstitutional effort aimed at giving Trump the power to create a list of those who are allowed to vote by mail,” Democratic Alliance election lawyer Marc Elias, who was a loyal attack dog in the elections of both former Presidents Joe Biden and Harris, quickly wrote in X.
“We know where this is going – the Democrats’ focus on massive cuts.
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“We will sue and we will win.”
Democratic presidential candidate Marc Elias has been suing Donald Trump for years. (David Jolkovski of the Washington Post)
New Jersey, Maryland, Illinois and Minnesota have “Permanent Absentee” lists where, once registered, you are automatically sent to the ballot in every future election. New York, Virginia, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New Mexico and Delaware do not have a required voting excuse.
Any of those states also resist opposition, but Trump has said he is prepared for a legal battle.
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“Maybe they will challenge it,” he said. “You get a bad judge – a lot of bad judges. Very, very bad people. Very bad judges. And I hope we win on appeal if that’s the case.”
Trump’s order directs the Department of Homeland Security, in cooperation with the Social Security Administration, to compile a list of eligible voters in each state and seeks to prevent the US Postal Service from delivering absentee ballots to voters who are not on government-approved lists. It also calls for ballot envelopes with unique tracking barcodes and threatens to withhold federal funding from states and localities that do not comply.
“Not only is his order unconstitutional, it makes no sense,” NAACP President Derrick Johnson told Reuters in a statement. “This order will not stop.”
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Legal experts say the order is likely to face constitutional challenges immediately because the administration of elections is left to the states, not the president.
“This executive order is clearly unauthorized and illegal,” Brennan Center for Justice Vice President at New York University Wendy Weiser told the Washington Post.
The AP reported that Oregon, Arizona, Maine and Nevada were among the Democratic-led states where top officials threatened lawsuits or said they would not comply:
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In Oregon: “We don’t need regulations from Washington, DC,” said Secretary of State Tobias Read, a Democrat. “My message to the President: We will see you in court.” Oregon Attorney General Dan Rayfield, also a Democrat, added that the state will “use every legal tool at our disposal to fight this and protect Oregonians’ right to vote.”
In Arizona: Fontes, in addition to his above comments, added, “We will not let this stand.”
Maine: Secretary of State Shenna Bellows, a Democrat, called the order “ridiculously unconstitutional” and said Maine would not comply. More than a quarter of Maine voters voted by mail in the 2024 election.
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Nevada: Secretary of State Francisco Aguilar, the lone Democrat in the state Trump won in 2024, said the order would burden local election officials and “doesn’t benefit anyone in this country but him.”
The latest order follows Trump’s broader push to reshape election rules from Washington. A March 2025 executive order that called for sweeping changes to voter registration and mail-in voting laws was largely blocked in court after lawsuits from voting rights groups and Democratic state attorneys general.
“The president has no authority to control the election,” Weiser told the Post. “He tried to do something like this last year.
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“We and others really sued. We won. We expect the same result this time.”
Election law experts say Tuesday’s order is vulnerable for many of the same reasons.
David Becker, a former Justice Department attorney who now heads the Center for Election Innovation and Research, said the Constitution is clear that the president does not control federal elections.
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The order was “clearly unconstitutional” and would be blocked immediately, Becker wrote on social media, adding that Trump “may sign an EO banning gravity.”
Becker also noted that the Postal Service is governed by a board of governors, limiting the president’s authority to say where it can handle mail.
“There is no mandate for this,” UCLA Safeguarding Democracy Project Director Richard Hasen told the Post, adding that the order won’t go into effect during the midterm elections.
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“It’s just a dream,” concluded Hasen. “That’s why I think this is not serious.”
The order also reignites concerns about the federal SAVE program, which voting rights advocates have criticized as unreliable and prone to errors that could affect eligible voters.
At least one Republican election official on Tuesday defended the SAVE program while downplaying the potential for voter fraud.
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Robert Sinners, a spokesman for Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger – who strongly opposed Trump’s investigation into the integrity of the 2020 presidential election – said their recommendations to the Trump administration strengthened voter verification and emphasized that “a small number flagged as people who may not be able to vote by mail or in person until they provide proof of citizenship.”
“The executive order will be decided in court, but in Georgia, we already certify citizenship and will continue to do so regardless of the outcome,” Sinners added.
The Brennan Center and other groups have warned that using the state’s database of state voter rolls could create errors, privacy concerns and obstacles for legal voters.
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“The Constitution doesn’t allow the administration to take over elections; that’s the job of state legislatures or Congress, so I don’t think this is going to pass any kind of resolution,” Fontes told the New York Times.
“So this is a huge waste of time, and it’s an oversight by the Trump administration.”
Trump disagrees, even though he used mail-in voting himself last month.
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“Yes, I did,” Trump said in response to a reporter on Thursday. “You know what? Because I’m the president of the United States.”
“And because I’m the president of the United States, I voted by mail in the Florida election because I felt I should be here rather than out in the sun.”
“You know, there’s something different mail-in ballots,” Trump said. “You know that, right? So if you are far away, something is different. If you are in the military, something is different. If you are on a business trip, something is different. If you have a disability, there is an exception. And if you are sick, if you don’t feel well.
“So I wasn’t in Washington, DC that much time, so I used a mail-in vote.”
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Trump often invokes the landmark 2005 results of the Carter-Baker Commission, which warned of the dangers of mail-in voting integrity.
Reuters and AP contributed to this report.
