A voter deposits an absentee ballot at a drop box outside the Chester County Government Building in West Chester, Pennsylvania, on Tuesday, Nov. 5, 2024. (Photo by Peter Hall/Pennsylvania Capital-Star)
More than a dozen Republican state attorneys general are seeking to defend President Donald Trump’s executive order on mail-in ballots against legal challenges brought by Democrats.
On Monday and Tuesday, in response to Democrats’ lawsuits, Republican Party officials, led by Missouri Attorney General Catherine Hanaway, argued in multiple court filings that Order from March 31st provides states with “optional resources” that facilitate secure their elections and do not threaten voting rights.
States “would like to have access to this resource so they can verify the accuracy of their own voter registration lists. This flow of information between federal and state agencies is a common and key feature of our federal system,” Republican officials wrote in court document.
The attorneys general of Alabama, Florida, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Montana, Nebraska, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota and Texas joined Hanaway in this effort.
The order directs the postmaster general to come up with rules that would prevent the U.S. Postal Service from delivering ballots or ballots from voters who are not on lists of approved mail-in voters provided by states. Democrats and postal law experts say the Postal Service has no authority over elections.
“The Constitution and numerous court decisions make it clear: the president does not have the authority to issue executive orders that seek to undermine states’ ability to conduct their own elections” – Over 100 Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives he wrote in a letter to Trump on Monday.
Trump’s order also directs the Department of Homeland Security to compile lists of voting-age U.S. citizens in each state. Democrats say the Trump administration is creating unauthorized national voter rolls, even though the U.S. Constitution gives states responsibility for conducting federal elections.
The Democratic National Committee, top Democratic lawmakers, and Democratic attorneys general and secretaries of state everyone filed a lawsuit block this command as well as voting rights groups. Republican state attorneys general are seeking to intervene in these lawsuits.
GOP officials argue that Democrats do not have standing to challenge the Postal Service provisions of the order and that their objections are premature because the Postal Service has not finalized any novel rules regarding mail-in ballots.
The order “simply directs” the Postal Service “to initiate rulemaking – it does not directly regulate the States and does not directly limit anyone’s voting rights,” says a court filing filed by the state’s attorney general.
The executive order marked Trump’s latest attempt to seize power over federal elections. A previous ordinance that required voters to prove their citizenship was blocked in court. Legislation to impose such a requirement is stalled in the U.S. Senate.
The Justice Department also sued 30 states and the District of Columbia for access to unredacted state voter rolls containing sensitive personal information, including driver’s license and partial Social Security numbers. Although federal courts have so far rejected these lawsuits, at least a dozen states have voluntarily turned over data.
The Department of Justice is planning share this information with the Department of Homeland Securitywhich will employ a computer program to search for potential voters who are not citizens of the country.
