President Trump signed an executive order on Tuesday that will require proof of U.S. citizenship on election forms, in an aggressive push to catch and combat voter fraud, which is exceedingly rare but constantly cited by Mr. Trump as a reason he lost the 2020 election.
The order calls for the Election Assistance Commission to require people to show government-issued proof of U.S. citizenship to register to vote in federal elections, and directs state or local officials to record and verify the information. It also seeks to require states to count ballots by Election Day.
Administration officials, who cast the order as one of the most far-reaching in American history related to elections, cited cracking down on immigrants illegally on voter rolls as one of the order’s main goals, amplifying Mr. Trump’s longstanding grievances about election integrity. He has falsely claimed that illegal votes contributed to his losing the 2020 election and the popular vote in 2016.
Like many of Mr. Trump’s orders, this one is likely to face legal challenges for executive overreach.
Rick Hasen, a political science professor and director of the Safeguarding Democracy Project at the University of California, Los Angeles, School of Law, said that Mr. Trump had no authority to dictate how states ran their elections, such as requiring them to count their ballots by Election Day.
Mr. Hasen added that Mr. Trump’s exertion of power over the commission — which was created by legislation passed in Congress — would need to be tested in court, since what he is ordering them to do is “either contrary to law or at best disputed.”
“This executive order is important for what it tries to do on requiring voters to provide proof of citizenship when registering to vote, but it is even more important for what it means for Presidential power,” Mr. Hasen wrote in an email. “Trump is trying to assert power over an independent, bipartisan agency that Congress created to deal fairly and evenhandedly with assisting states in administering elections.”
The order claimed that current rules that prohibited states from allowing noncitizens to register to vote were not “adequately enforced,” and suggested that elections were also compromised by states that counted ballots received after Election Day.
This is standard practice in states that require that mail ballots are only postmarked by Election Day. But even in the weeks after his decisive victory in November, Mr. Trump continued to complain that ballots were still being counted.
The order threatens to withdraw federal funding in states that do not comply.
“Free, fair and honest elections unmarred by fraud, errors or suspicion are fundamental to maintaining our constitutional Republic,” the order stated. “The right of American citizens to have their votes properly counted and tabulated, without illegal dilution, is vital to determining the rightful winner of an election.”
At the signing, Mr. Trump — who still falsely claims he won the 2020 election — noted that some may not understand why he was complaining since he won “in a landslide” last year.
“There are other steps that we will be taking as the next in the coming weeks, and we think we’ll be able to end up getting fair elections,” Mr. Trump said on Tuesday at the signing. “This country is so sick because of the election, the fake elections and the bad elections, and we’re going to straighten it out one way or the other.”
