Trump's Election Order Targets Mail Ballots and Voter Lists, Raising Constitutional Concerns

President Trump signed an executive order on March 31 directing the U.S. Postal Service to transmit mail ballots only to verified voters and instructing federal agencies to compile citizenship lists for each state, his most ambitious attempt yet to reshape how Americans cast ballots. Election law experts across the political spectrum swiftly called the order unconstitutional, and Democratic state officials pledged immediate litigation.

The order tasks the federal government, through the USPS, with determining who receives a mail ballot. Specifically, the USPS is instructed only to transmit ballots for states that have provided the federal government a list of eligible mail voters 60 days before the election and that have met several requirements for making their mail ballots compatible with USPS's automated tracking service. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, who stood behind Trump during the Oval Office signing, explained the mechanism: "The states run these elections – if they want to use the US mail, the US Postal Service, they're going to get a code, a bar code, from the US Postal Service and they're going to put that on the envelope and we will have one envelope per vote," Lutnick said.

The order directs the Secretary of Homeland Security, in coordination with the Social Security Administration, to compile and transmit to each state a State Citizenship List of confirmed U.S. citizens who will be 18 or older at the time of the next upcoming federal election and reside in that state. The order, formally titled "Ensuring Citizenship Verification and Integrity in Federal Elections," also carries a financial threat: federal funding would be withheld from states that refuse to comply with the mandates. Additionally, the Department of Justice is instructed to prioritize criminal prosecutions of state and local officials "who issue Federal ballots to individuals not eligible to vote in a Federal election."

The constitutional barrier is straightforward, according to legal experts. David Becker, a former Justice Department lawyer who now advises state and local election officials, said this latest order will quickly meet the same fate as the last one. "It is very clear that the president is trying to dictate policy to the states, and it's also very clear that the United States Constitution prevents that," Becker said. "His power is limited only to that which Congress has expressly authorized." Rick Hasen, an election law expert at UCLA, wrote on his blog that the order is likely unconstitutional and that "the timing here makes this virtually impossible to implement in time for November's elections … It seems highly unlikely any of this could be implemented for 2026, even if it were not blocked by courts."

The order is Trump's second on elections since returning to office. Trump issued a prior order just over a year ago that attempted to require voters to provide documented proof of citizenship and prohibit the counting of mail ballots postmarked by Election Day but received afterward. Federal courts repeatedly ruled the president lacked the constitutional authority for those provisions. The courts uniformly blocked the main operative provisions of that order as beyond the president's power under the Constitution.

Trump defended the new order at signing, claiming it was legally bulletproof. "It's about voter integrity, we want to have honest voting in our country because if you don't have honest voting, you can't have really a nation," Trump said. His allegations of widespread mail ballot fraud, however, are contradicted by available data. A 2025 report by the Brookings Institution found that mail voting fraud occurred in only 0.000043% of total mail ballots cast, or about four cases per 10 million mail ballots. Trump himself has also used mail ballots, most recently in local Florida elections.

State officials moved quickly to announce legal challenges. Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold said in a written statement: "The Constitution is clear: states oversee elections, not Trump. We look forward to this unconstitutional overreach being stopped in court." Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser was similarly direct: "Nearly all Colorado voters, Democrats, Republicans and Unaffiliated, use mail ballots in our elections. Colorado's voting system is secure and fair, and we will take legal action to protect Colorado's elections."

The order comes as Trump pressures Republicans in Congress to pass the SAVE America Act, a sweeping election overhaul that would impose new voter identification and documentation requirements. That bill is stalled in the Senate due to Democratic opposition and the legislative filibuster. With courts having already drawn a constitutional line around presidential authority over state-run elections, the order's practical effect on November's midterms may depend entirely on how quickly federal judges rule, and whether any state chooses to comply before they do.