By withholding federal funds and threatening investigations, President Donald Trump attempted to succumb to his will.
Now he's doing the same thing. They are trying to force the nation to change election rules.
In Tuesday's executive order, Trump created what constitutes a series of demands on states to change election laws and policies. For one thing, he hopes that the state will become more strict by demanding evidence of citizenship for voter registration.
Trump also hopes the nation will stop counting the number of mail-order tickets sent before Election Day but have since arrived. In fact, he suggests that counting such votes is against federal law. Most judges and mainstream legal experts consider this interpretation of the law to be ridiculous, but it has steamed to the right.
Trump is trying to do all this, despite not having the legal authority to tell the state how the president will hold elections. In fact, some aspects of his order will likely be challenged in court.
But he is trying to intimidate the state anyway, withdrawing federal election support funds and blackmailing him with an unspecified lawsuit from his Department of Justice, hoping they will follow.
All the biggest threats are implicit. That means Trump is setting the stage for a truly troubling attempt to use the federal government to challenge election results in states that don't make the changes he wants. This gives the state a difficult choice to make: Giving now or later on a ugly fight?
Trump's demands on the state
Trump's initial demand is evidence of stricter citizenship for voters. He wants to force people registering to vote, or renew their registration to prove their citizenship. He also wants to force state and local officials to do more to check people's citizenship with voter roles. The order also directs various federal agencies to make citizenship data easier to make it easier for state and local officials to access citizenship data.
This demand reflects unfounded right-wing conspiracy theories in which non-citizens regularly vote for a huge number of Democrats. For decades, conservatives have believed this was happening. But somehow they can't find any evidence to prove it. Existing data and research suggest that a small number of non-citizens will attempt to vote as they disappear. For example, Georgia audited voter roles in 2024 and found that out of the 8 million registered voters, only 20 were non-citizens.
Still, many on the right have long argued that it is common sense to require voters to prove citizenship, whether or not illegal voting is happening in a significant number. Critics argue, however, that, as there is no actual widespread problem of non-citizen voting, the most consequential impact is to suppress legal voting from citizens who do not have easily available proof documents.
Trump's second request is not to count mailed votes that state and local officials have arrived since Election Day.
All states using email-in voting must vote before or before Election Date. But 18 states have the possibility of a vote coming (for example, California accepts it from seven days after Election Day, and Alaska accepts it until 10 days later). This is to ensure that legitimate votes are not ruled out due to slow mail delivery, simply to give voters flexibility.
But Trump has adopted Fringe's legal theory that counting barrats that arrive after election day is illegal as existing federal law sets a unified date for federal elections. This theory was rejected by almost all (but not all) judges who heard the case about this. But Trump's order argues that this is the law and directs his attorney general to “take all necessary actions” against states that “violate” it.
The request reflects an unfounded theory that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump by fraudulent, delayed mail-in voting. It is not true that mail-in voting, which has been delayed, has shaken the election. Biden won 80,000 votes in Pennsylvania, but the statewide received 10,000 mail-in votes since Election Day. Many mail-in voting counted very slowly in a process that took several days (and Republicans from key states refused to help speed up). However, such votes were overwhelmingly received on Election Day itself or on its own.
Anyway, Trump is demanding these changes and demanding a nation that threatens states that refuse them.
The threat Trump is pursuing to a nation that refuses to comply with
To try to make his demands come true, Trump has insisted on his powers against the Election Assistance Commission (EAC). EAC was established as an independent federal committee by Congress in 2002 to help state and local governments improve election management by distributing grants and maintaining templates for postal voter registration forms.
As Trump did with other independent institutions, he asserts his authority over the EAC in the (presumably justified) belief that the current Supreme Court would support such power. His order directs the EAC to add proof of citizenship requirements to the postal voter registration form. The EAC also says it should not use that form and withhold funds from states that count the number of mail-in votes arriving after Election Day.
The nation can pass without the EAC money. But the order also poses an ominous threat to states that don't make the changes Trump wants, rather than protecting the Justice Department.
Trump's claim that mail-in voting that appears after Election Day is illegal, even if state law says it's not – is particularly ominous. It lays the foundation for him to challenge the Democratic Party's close election victory in such a vote. Given the Supreme Court's refusal to take up the issue in the past, he will likely lose in court. But the outcome is not entirely certain, and even the battle will be ugly.
So, how important is this late deadline for 18 states forced to ask now for deadlines after mail-in voting? Like most state voting rules, deadlines have little partisan impact. People adapt to different rules, most simply submit votes early.
Still, Trump clearly hopes that this change is sufficient to allow late arrival Democrats to vote by mail, to bring election results to Republican favors, and if a particular election is close enough, he would be right.
To repeat, in recent years, low-performing voters have been increasingly moving towards GOP. These voters are probably unlikely to send a vote early. So Trump may not get the results he wants.
