This evening, President Trump signed an Executive Order (the “Order”) to create a master list of U.S citizens eligible to vote in federal elections and force states to limit access to mail ballots to individuals on that list. The Order, titled “Ensuring Citizenship Verification and Integrity in Federal Elections,” represents a dramatic escalation of the President’s efforts to perpetuate his false claims of widespread non-citizen voting and significantly threatens the orderly administration of upcoming primary and general elections.
Specifically, the Order instructs the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Social Security Administration to use federal data to compile a list of individuals in each state who are “confirmed to be U.S. citizens.” This list must be sent to each state no later than 60 days before each regularly scheduled Federal election. It must be created using various federal records and databases, including the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements database (“SAVE”), which contains notoriously inaccurate citizenship records. For example, in St. Louis County, Missouri, 35% of voters initially flagged by SAVE were determined to have been registered at naturalization ceremonies. Seventy clerks across Missouri signed a letter to state legislators warning that “individuals we know to be U.S. citizens — our neighbors, colleagues and even voters we have personally registered at naturalization ceremonies” are improperly flagged by the system. In Texas, at least 5% of voters identified by SAVE as noncitizens were citizens, with Denton County reporting at least a 14% error rate.
The Order also attempts to limit which Americans can receive mail ballots using two key provisions designed to force states to deny a mail ballot to any voter not on this federal citizenship list.
First, the Order blatantly threatens criminal prosecution against state and local election workers who “issue Federal ballots to individuals not eligible to vote in a Federal election.” This part of the Order is clearly intended to intimidate election workers into relying on the federal government’s list of eligible voters, despite the possession of local knowledge and voter registration forms asserting eligibility under penalty of perjury.
Second, the Order requires the United States Postal Service to promulgate rules requiring that all mail ballots sent through USPS only be sent to: (i) a list of voters provided by each state in advance; and (ii) in an envelope with a unique, trackable barcode on the ballot envelope. The USPS procedures, again, are clearly designed to force compliance with the federal citizenship list by denying states the ability to use USPS to transmit ballots to voters not on the federal list. Worse, the tracking code would provide the federal government with a way to identify ballots sent to individuals it believes to be non-citizens.
Elias Law Group lawyers are available to advise further on the broad-reaching implications of this Order. We anticipate litigation will be filed over its legality and will continue to provide updates.