President Donald Trump signed an executive order Tuesday evening that includes new restrictions on voting by mail, part of an effort to limit or even outright ban the practice.
The order would require the Department of Homeland Security to formulate a list of eligible voters in each state, with the threat of cutting federal funding for localities that refuse to comply. As part of the order, each mail-in ballot will be equipped with a barcode that will be scanned by the U.S. Postal Service and matched to an eligible voter to ensure integrity.
“I believe it will be foolproof,” Trump said during an Oval Office signing of the order. “Maybe it’ll be tested, maybe it won’t.”
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Trump’s order calls for Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin to take the lead in creating a database of eligible voters in each state. States will then be provided with a list of confirmed voters no less than 60 days before each federal election, The Daily Caller reported.
States that fail to comply are at risk of losing federal funds, per the order, and Attorney General Pam Bondi is tasked with prioritizing cases of ballots sent to voters deemed ineligible by DHS.
“The President will do everything in his power to defend the safety and security of American elections and to ensure that only American citizens are voting in them. Congress should also expeditiously pass President Trump’s SAVE America Act to protect elections for generations to come,” White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson told The Daily Caller, which first reported the news.
Trump has attempted for weeks to gain the support in the Senate to pass his SAVE America Act, which would require proof of citizenship in order to register to vote.
The legislation has struggled to gain enough support and Trump has recently called on Senate Majority Leader John Thune to eliminate the filibuster in order to bypass the chamber’s 60-vote threshold. The president also suggested that all other legislation, including negotiations over how to end the ongoing DHS shutdown, should be put on the back burner in order to fast-track the election security bill.
Thune has publicly disagreed with the strategy.
“He’s got a view about, you know, connecting everything to the SAVE America Act,“ Thune told reporters last week. “My view is we should deal with the immediate crisis in front of us and figure out how to fund the government, but we’ll see.”
At Tuesday’s signing, Trump expressed annoyance with the Senate’s delay in passing the SAVE America Act.
“You would think it would be easy, it’s a 98% issue for Republicans,” Trump said. “The leaders of the Democrats cheat, and the only people that don’t want to do voter IDs are people that cheat. There’s no other reason for it.”
Advocates and voting experts have said that the legislation would have a disproportionate impact on various groups, including elders who vote by mail, college students and married women who have changed their last names.
NOTUS also reported earlier this month that Native Americans living on tribal land would likely be the hardest hit by the SAVE America Act, as they have among the lowest rates of passport ownership and often live far from polling stations.
“We believe that the combined 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,” White House attorney Will Scharf said on Tuesday standing alongside Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and Trump.
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