Trump signs executive order aimed at cracking down on mail-in voting

President Donald Trump on Tuesday signed an executive order to create a federal list of citizens who are eligible to vote and change parts of the process for mail-in ballots.

The order is certain to spark legal challenges -- the Constitution firmly places the power to decide the “Times, Places and Manner” of elections in the hands of states, not the federal government.

Democratic Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer responded to the announcement in a post on social media, telling the White House, “See you in court. You will lose.

” The president’s order comes as Trump has so far failed to make progress on passing the SAVE America Act, which — along with other domestic priorities of the president — would seek to fundamentally retool the federal government’s role in voter registration and administering elections months ahead of the midterms.

The new order attempts to place restrictions on absentee ballots, mandating that those ballots can be sent only to people on each state's approved mail-in ballot list.

It also changes the design of ballots that are mailed in, with barcodes aimed at making it easier to track the ballot. According to the executive order, a ballot must be "marked as Official Election Mail" through a U. S.

Postal Service design, have an "Intelligent Mail barcode" from USPS and "has undergone a mail envelope design review by the USPS" to ensure the design is appropriate. Trump has consistently made unfounded allegations of mail-in voting fraud.

But a November 2025 analysis by the Brookings Institution found that "cases of fraud involving any form of mail ballots were very rare. " "We find an average total mail voting fraud percentage across the 2016, 2018, 2020, and 2022 general elections of only 0.