Why the New Anti-Voter Executive Order Is Unconstitutional

BY TREVOR POTTER

During President Donald Trump’s second term in office, his administration has consistently sought to unconstitutionally extend executive branch power in ways that dictate who can vote in our elections and how elections are administered. The president’s latest bid for control over our elections has produced yet another illegal executive order. This time, the main target is one the president is fond of blaming for electoral results he does not like: voting by mail.

The executive order was signed on March 31. Less than 48 hours later, Campaign Legal Center, alongside Democracy Defenders Fund, filed a lawsuit to block it on behalf of the League of United Latin American Citizens, Secure Families Initiative and Arizona Students’ Association. There’s a very simple reason why we were able to take legal action so quickly — it is based on the same faulty grounds as last year’s executive order on elections.

We challenged that order in court, because it illegally claimed a role for the executive branch in our elections where none exists in the Constitution or current law. Multiple federal courts have blocked the first executive order, and we fully expect the same to happen with this one.

So, what does this new order purport to do? In short, it seeks to impose a series of new requirements for mail-in voting; create a national federal database of “verified” eligible voters based on faulty information; and restrict the ability of the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) to send mail-in ballots to voters not on that list. It also threatens to punish states that fail to comply with the order by withholding federal funding and prosecuting state and local election officials for failure to comply.

https://www.brightamerica.org/p/why-the-new-anti-voter-executive