Donald Trump on Tuesday issued an executive order that would make sweeping changes to how elections in the US are held... all to benefit the GOP.
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Donald Trump has a complicated history with elections. When he wins, they are beautifully run and a testament to his popularity. When he loses, they are “rigged,” and must be overturned by any means necessary, for example by staging a coup or sending a violent mob to Congress.
For Republicans, things are less complicated. To them, elections must be won by any means necessary, no matter how many votes they have to suppress, how extreme their gerrymanders have to be (which is a bipartisan problem), how much they have to lie and cheat, or how much they have to subvert democracy in the process.
Those interests aligned on Tuesday when Trump signed an executive order that claims powers he does not have to do things he cannot legally do.
Of course, in light of the composition of the Supreme Court, as well as its poor track record when it comes to democracy-related cases, that does not mean that it will ultimately be overturned.
So, let’s assume that the court that brought you “Corporations are people,”“Money is speech,” and “There is no more racism in the South, so let’s gut the Voting Rights Act,” will side with Trump.
In that case, what he did on Tuesday will not only fundamentally change how elections are conducted but also who runs them by giving the president a lot more power.
But before we get into what the order would do, it’s important to understand that the justification for it is complete nonsense.
Republicans claim, without ever having presented any shred of proof, that noncitizens voting is a widespread problem.
However, all available evidence shows that this is categorically false.
Most recently, Georgia’s Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (a Trump foe because he did not go along with his 2020 coup), conducted an audit of his state’s voter rolls that he believes may have been the most comprehensive in US history and found that 20 voter registrations out of 8.2 million belonged to noncitizens.
Of course, that does not mean that those few were even “fraudulent.” As the Trump administration knows, people make errors all the time, like inviting journalists to a high-level group chat in which the attacks on another country are planned, so it’s much more likely that a noncitizen inadvertently checked the wrong box than risk being imprisoned for up to five years just to cast a vote that will make no difference in the outcome of an election.
But, since Republicans won’t let facts get in the way of a good narrative (especially one that lets them win elections), they have perpetuated the myth of “illegals” casting huge numbers of ballots because that makes it easier to suppress votes.
For his part, Trump embraces this evidence-free conspiracy theory because it provides a convenient explanation why he lost the popular vote twice and why he was defeated in 2020.
And Republicans use it to put in place more stringent voter ID requirements.
That in itself would not be a problem… if those IDs were easy to obtain for all Americans. However, since that is not the case, these requirements make it more difficult for some demographics, especially voters of color (who overwhelmingly vote for Democrats), to cast their ballots.
It is also important to keep in mind that election laws are, for the most part, a domain of the states, which is why there is so much voter suppression in red states in the first place.
Trump’s order would change that (well, not the voter suppression part, which it would exacerbate).
First, it would require proof of citizenship, such as a passport (which many Americans don’t have) to be eligible to vote.
In addition, the order would block states from accepting mail-in ballots after Election Day, even those that were mailed in time.
Finally, it also directs the Department of Homeland Security and a member of Elon Musk’s DOGE team to review voter registration lists to ensure that they meet federal requirements.
If states do not comply with the order, Trump wants to withhold federal funds from them that the Election Assistance Commission (EAC), an independent, bipartisan agency, disburses to ensure that US elections run smoothly.
Predictably, election integrity experts were appalled and said they would sue.
“A president does not set election law and never will,” said Virginia Kase Solomón, the president and CEO of Common Cause. “Trump’s executive action is an attempt to take away our right to vote or make it so hard that we don’t participate.”
And election law expert Rick Hasen called the order “an executive power grab” and argued that the proof of citizenship requirement would disenfranchise millions of voters.
“The aim here is voter suppression pure and simple,” he said.
In his Navigating the Insanity columns, Klaus Marre provides the kind of hard-hitting, thought-provoking, and often humorous analysis you won’t find anywhere else.
