Trump hit with new legal action over order built on a 'hallucination'

President Donald Trump’s executive order restricting mail ballots faced a fresh challenge on Friday, as a coalition of Democratic states filed a lawsuit seeking to block an order that experts say is an extraordinary attempt by the president to assert authority over elections.

More than 20 states — led by California, Massachusetts, Nevada and Washington — and the District of Columbia sued in federal court in Massachusetts. They argue the order violates the Constitution, which gives states the responsibility to run elections and allows Congress, not the president unilaterally, the power to override state regulations.

“Though the President may wish he had unlimited power to restrict voting rights, the Constitution gives states – not the White House – the authority to oversee elections,” Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Joy Campbell, a Democrat, said in a statement.

The lawsuit is only the latest in a growing number of legal challenges to the order since Trump signed it on Tuesday.

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The Democratic National Committee, top Democrats in Congress and other Democratic groups have sued, along with the American Civil Liberties Union, League of Women Voters, the League of United Latin American Citizens and other voting rights groups.

Friday’s state-led challenge marked at least the fifth lawsuit over the order.

“Neither the Constitution nor any act of Congress confers upon the President the authority to mandate sweeping changes to States’ electoral systems or procedures,” the complaint reads.

The Trump administration has said the order is necessary to ensure the security of elections and crack down on noncitizen voting, which studies have found is extremely rare. Trump acknowledged the order would likely face litigation when he signed it but called it “foolproof.”

“The President will do everything in his power to defend the safety and security of American elections and to ensure that only American citizens are voting in them,” White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said in a statement on Wednesday.

List required

The order requires the Department of Homeland Security, with help from the Social Security Administration, to compile a list of voting-age U.S. citizens living in each state and then provide that information to state officials at least 60 days before each federal election.

The order does not tell states how to use the data, but it instructs the U.S. attorney general to prioritize investigations into state and local officials who issue federal ballots to ineligible voters.

The list of citizens will be drawn from naturalization and Social Security records, according to the order. It will also include data from SAVE, a powerful computer program maintained by Homeland Security that verifies citizenship by checking names against information in federal databases.

The order also directs the postmaster general to require every outbound mail ballot be in an envelope that includes a tracking barcode.

At least 90 days before a federal election, states must notify the U.S. Postal Service whether they intend to allow ballots to be sent through the mail. States would then have to submit to USPS a list of voters planning to vote by mail at least 60 days before the election.

“The expression ‘a solution in search of a problem’ came to mind, but this is sort of a quasi-solution in search of a hallucination,” said Pamela Smith, president and CEO of Verified Voting, an organization that promotes the responsible use of technology in elections.

Under the order, the Justice Department and other federal agencies would be directed to withhold federal funds from states and localities that don’t comply with federal laws. It doesn’t specify what federal funds would potentially be targeted or whether states could lose election-related dollars.

“The president’s illegal executive order creates a shadow voter eligibility list within the federal government and it threatens to coerce states into disenfranchising voters missing from those lists,” Nevada Attorney General Aaron Ford said at a news conference in Las Vegas.

States say they run elections, not feds

The coalition of states argues in the lawsuit that Trump’s order would require states to upend existing election administration procedures and spend significant time and resources “mitigating the harms” of its requirements and educating voters about the new rules.

The states joining the lawsuit include Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia, Washington and Wisconsin, in addition to the District of Columbia and Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, a Democrat.

Some Republican state officials have backed Trump’s efforts. Wyoming Secretary of State Chuck Gray in a statement voiced “complete and total” support for the order.

“I look forward to continuing to work with the Trump Administration, the Department of Homeland Security, the United States Postal Inspection Service, and our county clerks on implementation of this executive order,” Gray said.

But the states say the order would require states to act contrary to their own voter roll procedures, systems and voter registration laws, the complaint argues. Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes, a Democrat, said the Constitution is clear that states run elections.

“Not the President,” Mayes said. “And Arizona will not allow the federal government to seize control of our elections.”

Maryland Matters is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Maryland Matters maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Steve Crane for questions: editor@marylandmatters.org.