‘Recipe for chaos’: Trump order to create citizenship list, restrict mail-in ballots will create barriers for Black voters, critics warn
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“Even though the executive order is patently illegal, it could still have devastating consequences,” says Damon Hewitt, president and executive director of Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law.
President Donald Trump‘s latest attempt to control federal elections is being slammed by Black leaders who warn his new executive order targeting citizenship verification and mail-in voting will create more barriers to the ballot for Black voters and other marginalized groups.
The order, “Ensuring Citizenship Verification and Integrity in Federal Elections,” signed on Tuesday, establishes a federally run “State Citizenship List” of eligible voters to be compiled and transmitted to state election officials. The list would be determined by federal records at the Social Security Administration and the Department of Homeland Security. The executive order also instructs the United States Postal Service to generate custom ballot envelopes and barcodes for eligible mail-in ballots to reduce “the risk of fraud and protect the integrity of Federal elections.”
The White House set hard deadlines for this summer for the affected agencies to implement President Trump’s order, just months ahead of this November’s consequential midterm elections. As Trump’s approval ratings hit record lows and the cost of living continues to skyrocket amid the president’s war in Iran, Republicans in Congress are expected to see major losses as voters reject their, and by proxy, Trump’s leadership over the past year and a half.
“Right now, Donald Trump and Republicans in Congress are deploying every tactic imaginable to suppress the power of the people in a desperate effort to maintain control in Washington. The executive order signed by President Trump is an unlawful and unconstitutional attempt to dictate who in this country is allowed to vote,” the Congressional Black Caucus said in a statement. “This sweeping order would allow the Trump Administration to unilaterally determine voter eligibility, intimidate state election officials through politically motivated investigations, and jeopardize the privacy of millions of law-abiding Americans. It would also disenfranchise Black and other minority voters, women, young people, individuals with disabilities, and older Americans.
Trump has taken several actions to seemingly ensure victory for his party on Nov. 3. To date, he has called on Republican-controlled states to redraw congressional maps in their favor mid-decade, despite new maps not scheduled to be redrawn until 2030; and he has pushed Republicans in Congress to pass the SAVE America Act, which would require proof of citizenship for all voters in federal elections. The president has also sought to get access to voters’ personal data from states and ordered the FBI to seize 2020 election ballots from a Fulton County election office in Atlanta.
Damon Hewitt, president and executive director of Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, said Trump’s order is anti-democratic and is intended to “intimidate voters” and sow “confusion in the process.”
“By attempting to create a voter database, Trump is once again treading on the Constitution. This is a blatant effort to single out Americans to question their eligibility and silence their political voice,” said Hewitt. The civil rights attorney also said the president does not have the authority to restrict the use of mail-in ballots.
“This is a clear overreach of executive power and a direct threat to the fundamental right to vote. The Constitution does not grant the president unilateral authority to dictate how Americans cast their ballots—this power rests with the states and Congress. Efforts to undermine lawful, widely used voting methods are both legally suspect and deeply harmful to our democracy,” said Hewitt. “Even though the executive order is patently illegal, it could still have devastating consequences. We anticipate a large number of Black voters and other people of color who were eligible to vote in many past elections will be wrongfully excluded from the so-called approved vote-by-mail lists.”
Maya Wiley, president and CEO of The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, said the president’s latest action to ensure so-called election integrity is actually “an attempt to take your voice, take your vote, and predetermine outcomes by placing new barriers between people and the ballot — particularly for Black communities and other historically marginalized voters.”
Wiley noted that the executive order would drown states in administrative costs at a time when they are already “absorbing the consequences of this administration’s abandonment of its obligations to the American people: cuts to Medicare, Medicaid, food assistance, housing support, and education.”
The civil rights attorney urged state attorneys general and election officials to fight the Trump administration in court against what she described as an “attempt to centralize control over the ballot under the guise of security, using tools that don’t work, data that isn’t trustworthy, and deadlines designed to guarantee failure and invite federal punishment.”
Wiley added, “Taken together, these actions reveal a clear strategy: instead of earning the trust and votes of the American people, this administration is trying to hand-pick the electorate itself.”