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 0.000043%, or about four cases of mail voting fraud out of every 10 million mail votes," the report said.
And the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank responsible for Project 2025, found 387 instances of fraudulent use of absentee ballots across every election recorded since 1982.
Election laws, including the tracking and tabulation of mail-in ballots, are governed by states. The executive order says that states that do not comply could lose federal funding.
Eliza Sweren-Becker, deputy director of the voting rights program at the nonpartisan Brennan Center for Justice, told ABC News on Tuesday that the executive order signed by Trump is not enforceable or constitutional.
It’s “just like the executive order that the President issued last year with respect to elections,” she said. “This order is unconstitutional. The President has no authority over federal elections. That power lies with states and with Congress.”
Staff secretary Will Scharf explained the rationale behind the bill as he presented it to the president.
"And we believe that combined, the measures in this executive order will help secure elections in the future and ensure that the many abuses of our election system in the past aren't repeated in future elections," Scharf said.
"The cheating on mail-in voting is legendary," Trump said while signing the order.
Trump recently used a mail-in ballot to vote in a special election in Florida even though he has long been a critic of the practice.
Trump vowed that he would appeal any decision that overturns his order. Democrats indicated they will challenge it in court.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, responding to White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt's X post touting the order, wrote, "See you in court. You will lose."
Marc Elias, a Democratic-aligned lawyer who often deals with voting rights, wrote on X that he will sue.
"This is a massive and unconstitutional voter suppression effort aimed at giving Trump the power to create a list of who is allowed to vote by mail. We know where this will go -- the targeting of Democrats for mass disenfranchisement. We will sue and we will win."
ABC News' Ivan Pereira, Oren Oppenheim and Nathan Lee contributed to this report.
