The March 25 executive order (EO) on American elections, which purports to protect election integrity, instead represents considerable legal overreach—and could disenfranchise many voters across the country.
The power to regulate the large majority of elections lies with the states and U.S. Congress—as set out by the Elections Clause of the U.S. Constitution. If followed, this EO would consolidate a great deal of power over elections within the executive branch and diminish the legal role held by Congress and the states in election administration. Organizations including the ACLU have already indicated their plans to sue to fight the EO in court.
As laid out in the 2025 Democracy Playbook, elections are one of the most fundamental pillars of our democracy. The EO would make the following changes:
- On purported non-citizen voting: There is no data that suggests that more than a minute number of non-citizens vote. On the contrary, in 2016, the Brennan Center for Justice found only 30 suspected cases of non-citizen voting, which comprised 0.0001% of the 23.5 million votes cast. A review conducted by the CATO Institute in 2020 across several states corroborated that non-citizens do not vote in numbers that can influence the outcome of elections.
The EO would “require” the Election Assistance Commission (EAC) to modify the federal voting form to require documentary proof of citizenship (DPOC), as opposed to current eligibility requirements passed by Congress. The EAC is an independent federal agency and, as such, the Trump administration cannot currently compel compliance. DPOC would likely disenfranchise millions who do not have access to passports or REAL IDs that would be necessary under the EO for voting. According to the 2024 Survey of the Performance of American Elections, only 48% of respondents reported possession of an unexpired passport with their legal name. The EO’s requirement that federal voter registration departments and agencies assess citizenship before providing registration forms to public assistance programs will also likely cause delays.
- On maintaining accurate voting lists: The EO would allow the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to subpoena voting records for purported “list maintenance,” which could deter individuals from voting or registering to vote given privacy concerns. While list maintenance is essential for running fair elections, historically there have been purges or threatened purges of eligible voters. States already have many systems in place to review voter roll accuracy, and false claims of fraudulent voting in large numbers are not factually accurate. Similar attempts to access voter data made by the president’s election integrity commission in 2017 were rejected by 44 states and the District of Columbia.
- On reviewing elections infrastructure: The EO bars the use of equipment that tallies ballots with barcodes or quick-response codes in all cases except when necessary to accommodate voters with disabilities. Currently, the vast majority of states use machines that print paper ballots with a corresponding QR code, which a scanner uses to electronically tabulate the ballots. Election officials then often verify the accuracy of the machines by hand-counting a portion of the ballots to ensure that the results match. These machines produce lower error rates and have proven to be faster and more cost-effective than counting ballots by hand. Despite claims following the 2020 and 2022 elections, there is no evidence to suggest that using barcodes to tabulate votes leads to inaccurate results. This change could lead to inaccuracies and delays.
- On foreign national expenditures: While the EO cites the need to close loopholes in federal election laws allowing foreign national and non-governmental organizations to spend in state and local ballot measures, the Trump administration’s decision to cite the need to protect against foreign interference conflicts with its recent policy decisions downgrading the U.S.’s ability to monitor and combat election interference. On February 5, Attorney General Pam Bondi shifted resources away from an important unit of prosecutors tasked with prosecuting unregistered foreign agents. The Trump administration has also imposed sweeping funding and staff cuts on the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, the federal agency responsible for, among other items, deterring foreign misinformation and providing cyber and election security resources.
- On counting absentee and mail-in ballots after election day: The claims in the EO that states have accepted ballots without postmarks after Election Day are not accurate. Each state has slightly different legislation on this point, but all that accept ballots that arrive after Election Day have specific requirements for the date of postmark. No state allows ballots to be counted that are cast or postmarked after Election Day. State laws set forth regulations surrounding counting ballots that are postmarked by a given date, and the executive branch does not have the legal authority to modify those dates. The EO directs the Attorney General and the Department of Justice (DOJ) to “take all necessary action” against states that allow ballots to be counted after Election Day. This could lead the DOJ to sue states with laws that allow ballots postmarked by a certain date to be counted after Election Day.
Any reduction of mail-in ballots could hinder the disabled, military, university, and elderly populations’ ability to vote. Voters in states where mail-in ballots are heavily relied upon—including Alaska, California, and Pennsylvania—would also be disproportionately impacted.
The EO also threatens to withhold federal funding from state and local election offices that do not comply with changes. This is potentially questionable given that the Tenth Amendment prohibits the federal government from coercing states, including by withholding federal funding.
The executive order requires the EAC to submit a report describing compliance within 90 days of the order, by June 23, 2025. Given the legal questions surrounding the EO, it remains to be seen if the EAC will be obligated to comply. Three members of the four-person bipartisan board of the EAC would need to vote to enact the president’s changes.
Elections are the bedrock of a functioning American democracy, and the EO’s components run contrary to the right to vote which is fundamental to our democratic system.