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From our inbox – a word from Democracy Docket
Democrats sued to block President Donald Trump’s executive order targeting mail-in voting Wednesday, calling it “unconstitutional” and designed to rig elections ahead of the 2026 midterms.
The lawsuit, brought by the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, the Democratic National Committee, the Democratic Governors Association and Democratic congressional leaders, alleges Trump’s order would “upturn the electoral playing field in his own favor and against his political rivals.”
The plaintiffs* are asking a judge to quickly halt enforcement of the order before it can take effect.
At the center of the lawsuit is the core constitutional principle that presidents do not control elections.
“Our Constitution’s Framers anticipated this kind of desire for absolute power. They recognized the menace it would pose to ordered liberty and the ways in which it would corrode self-government like an acid,” the complaint reads.
Democrats argue Trump’s order would restrict mail voting access and insert federal agencies into election administration — a role the Constitution explicitly reserves for states and Congress.
“Undeterred by this consistent authority— and his own continued failures to convince Congress to adopt his self-aggrandizing election policies — President Trump has yet again taken matters into his own hands,” the complaint adds. “Just days after it became clear Congress would fail to pass the President’s SAVE America Act, he signed a new Executive Order … This Executive Order seeks to impose radical changes to the manner and conditions under which citizens may cast absentee or mail-in ballots — changes that imminently threaten to disenfranchise lawful voters and plainly exceed the President’s lawful authority.”
The lawsuit also takes aim at one of the order’s most controversial provisions, the creation of a national citizenship database for voters, describing it as part of a broader effort by the Trump administration to centralize control over elections.
“The Order drops the veil on a months-long campaign to amass a national citizenship registry—now formally mandating that Defendants create wholly unauthorized “State Citizenship Lists” and share those lists with States within 60 days of every federal election,” the complaint states. “Even as this Court recently expressed ‘grave concern’ over disclosures related to the same databases the Order directs Defendants to use in amassing this ‘List.’”
That citizenship list would violate federal laws aimed at protecting Americans’ sensitive data, like the Privacy Act, the complaint alleges.
The complaint also notes that Trump has already tried this once before and failed, issuing an executive order last March attempting to impose new limits on mail-in ballots and voter registration.
“Courts across the country — including this one — soon invalidated much of that executive order and its purported attempt to regulate elections as a violation of the separation of powers,” the Democrats argue.
The lawsuit further alleges that the order would violate various laws established by Congress that govern the operations of USPS, an “independent establishment” directed by a bipartisan board of governors.
If left to stand, the Democratic plaintiffs contend the order would turn the Postal Service “into an election administration agency that must determine every single voter’s eligibility to vote by mail—even though such determinations are solely the province of the States under the Elections Clause’s distribution of authority for voting administration and federal law.”
The complaint generally describes the order as a confused jumble of unclear and sometimes contradictory demands in service of solving the nonexistent problem of widespread illegal voting. Amid a series of unclear provisions, the order refers to both a “Mail-In and Absentee Participation List” of enrolled mail-in voters that USPS would provide states (after the states sent USPS their own list of eligible mail-in voters) and a State Citizenship List that DHS would send the states.
“The Order also does not clarify how the USPS’s Mail-In and Absentee Participation List is connected to the State Citizenship List; presumably, the latter will be used to help develop the former, but the Order never says so, nor does the Order otherwise establish any legitimate criteria or process for the USPS to use in determining who is eligible to vote,” the Democrats contend.
“In short…even when a voter is eligible to vote by mail under state law, a State sends the voter a mail ballot, and the voter completes the ballot and attempts to mail it to the State’s election officials, USPS must refuse to deliver the ballot unless the voter appears on USPS’s own Mail-In and Absentee Participation List,” they continue. “As a result, the Order will unlawfully disenfranchise qualified voters.”
The order’s new administrative burdens on mail voting and USPS, which delivered nearly 50 million ballots in 2024, come just two weeks after the postmaster general warned Congress that the agency was running out of money and less than a week after Trump voted by mail in a Florida special election.
*Democratic plaintiffs in this case are represented by the Elias Law Group (ELG). ELG Chair Marc Elias is the founder of Democracy Docket.
Democratic plaintiffs in this case are represented by the Elias Law Group (ELG). ELG Chair Marc Elias is the founder of Democracy Docket.
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