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Yahoo
30-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
No, a Judge Is Not Preventing Trump From Enforcing Election Law
Federal and state law have long prohibited noncitizens from voting in U.S. federal elections. Nonetheless, in a March 25 executive order seeking to tighten election security laws, President Donald Trump included a provision requiring that prospective voters show proof of citizenship to cast a ballot in federal elections. On April 24, U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly temporarily blocked the provision, ruling that the president likely 'lacks the authority' to unilaterally impose the nationwide requirement. Later that day, White House deputy chief of staff and homeland security adviser Stephen Miller claimed that Kollar-Kotelly's ruling barred the Trump administration from enforcing laws that make it illegal for noncitizens to vote in federal elections. 'It is a CRIME for non-citizens to vote but a single federal judge says President Trump cannot enforce this law,' Miller tweeted. 'An act of pure sabotage against citizenry and democracy.' That is not what Kollar-Kotelly ruled. The president can use executive authority to enforce federal bans on noncitizen voting, but as Kollar-Kotelly wrote in her opinion, that doesn't permit the president to issue new regulations—without congressional approval—dictating how states conduct elections. When asked to clarify Miller's tweet—and explain why he said the ruling prevents Trump from enforcing laws against noncitizen voting—Harrison Fields, White House principal deputy press secretary, told The Dispatch Fact Check, 'President Trump will keep fighting for election integrity, despite Democrat objections that reveal their disdain for commonsense safeguards like verifying citizenship.' As an explainer from the Migration Policy Institute lays out, all states had banned noncitizens from voting by 1924, and Congress added penalties in 1996. Noncitizens face potential federal prison sentences just for registering to vote. Kollar-Kotelly's ruling did not stipulate that the president or his Justice Department 'cannot enforce this law,' as Miller claimed. Rather, her ruling merely paused a separate provision, requiring proof of documentary citizenship to vote, included in Trump's executive order. According to a White House fact sheet, Trump's executive order 'strengthens voter citizenship verification and bans foreign nationals from interfering in U.S. elections.' One provision of this order, Section 2(a), states that an independent, bipartisan agency—the Election Assistance Commission (EAC)—will oversee that states implement documentary proof of citizenship requirements. 'Within 30 days of the date of this order, the Election Assistance Commission shall take appropriate action to require, in its national mail voter registration form … documentary proof of United States citizenship.' Under what authority can the president make such a move? The White House cited two statutory laws: the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 (NVRA) and the Help American Voters Act of 2002 (HAVA). NVRA, which took effect in 1995, established a uniform federal voter registration form for all 50 states. The legislation tasked the Federal Election Commission (FEC) with developing the federal form, created in part to avoid disparities among each state's voter registration process. In 2002, Congress through HAVA took that responsibility away from the FEC and transferred it to a new agency the legislation created, the EAC. For a change in the federal voter registration to be approved, three of the EAC's four commissioners would have to sign on. More than a dozen groups—10 nonpartisan, nonprofit organizations, plus four groups affiliated with the Democratic party—along with Democratic Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and Democratic House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, sued the Trump administration on April 1 and argued the president overstepped the bounds of executive authority. Their core legal claim: neither NVRA or HAVA authorizes the president to require that the EAC implement documentary proof of citizenship qualifications, and the Constitution gives the president no authority to dictate state election processes. Kollar-Kotelly ruled in a 120-page opinion that 'this separation-of-powers argument is substantially likely to succeed on the merits,' and issued a preliminary injunction temporarily blocking the documentary proof of citizenship requirements from taking effect until the court rules on the broader merits of the case. The Trump administration presented two primary arguments countering the legal challenge brought before them. For starters, the White House argued, the president's order didn't instruct or require the EAC to implement the documentary proof of citizenship—rather, it was a mere suggestion. In the administration's view, the EAC was free to adopt or reject that suggestion, making any legal challenge speculative and bound to fail on the merits. The administration also argued that the president has a constitutional duty to enforce the law, including the security of federal elections. Therefore, in creating documentary proof-of-citizenship requirements, Trump was fulfilling his constitutional duty to 'take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.' Kollar-Kotelly found neither of the administration's arguments compelling. 'First, the President has no constitutional duty to prescribe the content of election regulations,' she ruled. 'Second, any restriction on the President's ability to set the content of election regulation does not impair his ability to 'take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.'' To begin, she rejects the White House's premise that the executive order made no clear requirements, and that any changes were merely speculative. 'This account cannot be squared with the plain text of the Executive Order,' Kollar-Kotelly wrote. 'In short, there is no mystery about what Section 2(a) purports to require or whether Section 2(a) purports to require it.' The second argument presented by the administration resembles Miller's assertion: the law stipulates that noncitizens cannot vote in federal elections, and the president has a duty to uphold that law, so Trump has 'plenary authority' to direct the EAC to 'enforce the law' by updating voter registration processes. Kollar-Kotelly rejected this argument for two reasons. The first is that the administration first presented this argument at oral hearings. Yet, unless there are 'exceptional circumstances,' arguments that are not included in legal briefs and not mentioned until oral arguments are 'forfeited.' 'The Court could end its analysis of this argument there,' Kollar-Kotelly wrote. But, she explained, even ignoring that legal technicality, the administration's reasoning is still lacking. The president's authority to enforce the law does not vest him with lawmaking authority, she noted. In fact, when Congress criminalized noncitizen voting in federal elections, it specified how it expected the executive to enforce the law—through prosecution, not new laws. Trump 'has no constitutional duty to set regulations unless instructed to do so by Congress,' Kollar-Kotelly wrote. Moreover, Congress did not create the EAC to be used as a law-enforcing tool available at the president's disposal. 'The President has no constitutional power over election regulation that would support this unilateral exercise of authority,' Kollar-Kotelly wrote. 'The Constitution vests that power in the States and Congress alone.' While it's true that Congress did authorize the EAC to oversee a uniform federal form for all 50 states to follow in NVRA and HAVA, neither piece of legislation extended such authority to the president. 'Critically, Congress has never assigned any responsibility for the content of the Federal Form to the President or to any other individual in the Executive Branch with the power to act unilaterally,' Kollar-Kotelly explained. 'The power to alter the Federal Form is—and always has been—delegated solely to a bipartisan, independent commission with a duty to make changes only 'in consultation with the chief election officers of the States.'' If you have a claim you would like to see us fact check, please send us an email at factcheck@ If you would like to suggest a correction to this piece or any other Dispatch article, please email corrections@
Gulf Today
27-04-2025
- Politics
- Gulf Today
Let states take the lead on voter verification
President Donald Trump recently signed an executive order intended to ensure that only eligible citizens can vote in US elections. While we laud the purpose of the order, a better approach would be to look at how states are using data that they already possess to determine a voter's citizenship, and identify ways that the federal government could provide additional assistance. The executive order mandates that people provide proof of citizenship in order to register to vote anywhere in the country, and entrusts a federal agency — the Election Assistance Commission — with implementing the overhaul of the system. Currently, states set their own voting policies, and the Constitution tasks them with administering their own elections. Lawsuits have been filed to block the executive order, and the likelihood of a successful implementation of the order after it has been completely adjudicated is extremely low. The White House said in a fact sheet that the order would 'protect the integrity of American elections' by strengthening voter citizenship verification and ending 'foreign interference in our election process.' In practice, however, the order has the potential to create numerous unfunded mandates that election workers would be forced to contend with, and the possibility of creating other unintended consequences. As conservative Republicans and former secretaries of state responsible for administering elections in two Southern states, we have seen this dynamic play out in real time. Our experience has taught us that, thankfully, noncitizen voting is rare — it is already illegal in federal elections and is only authorised in a few local jurisdictions. But there is still much that can be done to ensure that it stays low. Those who are interested in getting the citizenship issue right can look to the states for promising pathways forward. What these efforts have in common is that they put the onus on state officials to ensure that rolls are free of noncitizens, rather than relying on people registering to vote to prove their citizenship. To date, there is no mechanism in place to easily allow states and local jurisdictions to confirm citizenship. In Oklahoma, for example, the state legislature passed S.B. 1040, which applies a so-called citizenship filter to the state's voter registration procedures. What the law does, in effect, is prohibit state employees from registering any residents to vote if they have provided documentation that demonstrates they are not a US citizen. While this may seem like common sense, language barriers, unfamiliarity with the relevant documentation and clerical oversights can often result in noncitizens being inadvertently offered the opportunity to register. Idaho's proposed H.B. 339, if passed, would 'ensure that only eligible Idaho voters are registered to vote in Idaho' by requiring that all registering voters be cross-checked against citizen databases. If a voter's citizenship status doesn't match with the database, they would be removed from the rolls. Secretary of State Phil McGrane has said his office removed several dozen noncitizen voters while acknowledging that 'this is very rare, it's very limited.' This comes after Idaho voters approved a constitutional amendment barring noncitizen voting last year. In Missouri, there are two bills under consideration that, taken together, would help to rebuild confidence that voter rolls are secure and up to date. S.B. 62 would require 'documentary proof of United States citizenship ... in order to register to vote.' And S.B. 280 would require the relevant state agencies to screen driver's license recipients for citizenship status before they are provided with a voter registration application form. Again, while this seems like common sense, codifying it into law helps head off potential red tape and bureaucratic issues in the future. In Georgia, Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger conducted an audit last year to verify the citizenship status of eligible voters and root out noncitizens. The state says it has now successfully implemented a system within its motor vehicle administration to verify citizenship status. In February, Raffensperger sent a letter to the Department of Homeland Security regarding the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) act — legislation that, if passed by Congress, would impose sweeping changes to the nation's election system — urging federal officials to 'remove some of the current burden states face in using SAVE as a tool for citizenship verification.' What these and other successful state-level policies understand is that there can be unintended consequences to introducing new citizenship requirements. Most people agree that we need to ensure only US citizens vote, but many fail to consider the second-order effects of less-targeted policies aimed at doing so. In one noteworthy case, in Kansas, state officials found that most of the 30,000 citizens who were removed from voter rolls under state law were, in fact, eligible US citizens. To take another example, married women who are US citizens could be mistakenly purged from the rolls under the SAVE act because of discrepancies related to changing their last names. In many cases, these voters skew disproportionately Republican, meaning that GOP-led voter integrity efforts could end up removing eligible Republican voters from the rolls . It is also critical to remember that, in addition to new voter ID laws, many states are working with out-of-date election technology and little or no funding available for modernisation. Based on our years of experience administering elections, we know that officials can only do so much with limited resources. By freeing up additional funds and connecting states with federal databases to cross-check voter information, states can better position themselves for success. The Republican majority in Congress has an opportunity to increase election funding by passing $75 million in new election-security grants. This money would be used for cybersecurity protection against foreign threats, staffing, purchasing new vote-counting equipment, updating registration systems and more. At the same time, it's important to point out that, fortunately, noncitizen voting is historically rare. In states where such fraud has been investigated, very few instances have been found in the modern era. Yet those in charge of administering elections must contend with the fact that a critical mass of the voting public harbors serious concerns about election integrity in general, and noncitizen voting in particular. For these reasons, we co-chair the Secure Elections Project, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organisation dedicated to keeping elections safe while ensuring everyone has fair access to voting in their lawful jurisdiction. Thankfully, as we've seen, it's possible to take voters' concerns seriously at the state level — while maintaining the right of eligible US citizens to cast a legal ballot.
New York Post
25-04-2025
- Politics
- New York Post
Trump's executive order mandating proof of citizenship to vote blocked by federal judge after flurry of legal setbacks
A federal judge in Washington, D.C., on Thursday blocked a portion of President Donald Trump's executive order on election integrity, specifically provisions related to providing documentary proof of citizenship before being allowed to register to vote. Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia handed down the order in response to lawsuits filed by three separate groups of plaintiffs over five different provisions in a March 25 Trump executive order relating to election integrity. Advertisement While Kollar-Kotelly dismissed requests to block three of the provisions, requests to block two other provisions pertaining to a proof of citizenship requirement for voters were granted. The first blocked provision sought to compel the Election Assistance Commission to amend standardized national voter registration forms to require documentary proof of citizenship. The second sought to require federal agencies offering voter registration to people on public assistance to 'assess' the individual's citizenship status before doing so. 'Our Constitution entrusts Congress and the States — not the President — with the authority to regulate federal elections. Consistent with that allocation of power, Congress is currently debating legislation that would effect many of the changes the President purports to order,' Kollar-Kotelly, a Clinton-appointee, wrote in her order. Advertisement 'No statutory delegation of authority to the Executive Branch permits the President to short-circuit Congress's deliberative process by executive order.' Kollar-Kotelly said she would not block the other provisions that the groups sought to challenge, which cover mail-in ballots and data collection on citizenship status, calling the challenges 'premature' and indicating they would be best challenged at the state level. Kollar-Kotelly made the decision in response to lawsuits that have been filed by three separate groups of plaintiffs over five different provisions in a March 25 Trump executive order relating to election integrity. Paul Martinka Earlier this month, the Republican-led House of Representatives passed a bill requiring proof-of-citizenship to vote in federal elections. Advertisement The measure still must pass the Senate, however, before the president can sign it into law. Meanwhile, 25 states are considering some form of proof-of-citizenship legislation, according to the Voting Rights Lab, which is tracking such legislation. In total, 15 state constitutions have explicit prohibitions against non-citizen voting. In addition to Trump's proof-of-citizenship orders getting shot down, two other federal judges from Maryland and New Hampshire also shot down additional orders from the president related to ending diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs in K-12 public schools on Thursday. Advertisement The rulings followed lawsuits filed by the National Education Association, the American Civil Liberties Union and the Maryland chapter of the American Federation of Teachers. The groups argued that making federal funding contingent on whether educators squash their DEI programs violates First Amendment rights granted by the Constitution. Fox News Digital reached out to the White House for comment on this article but did not receive a response in time for publication.
Epoch Times
25-04-2025
- Politics
- Epoch Times
Election Officials Question Agency About Trump's Overhaul of Election Standards
Local and state election officials across the country voiced concerns on April 24 about the logistics and impacts of the elections overhaul President Donald Trump Documentary proof of citizenship to register to vote, new voting system guidelines, and the review and recertification of voting machines were just a few of the sweeping changes mandated by the president's executive order. The independent Election Assistance Commission is responsible for enacting those changes. Meanwhile, at the federal agency's annual meeting in Charlotte, North Carolina, on Thursday, members of the commission's Standards Board peppered commissioners with questions about what that would entail. Paul Lux, an elections supervisor in Okaloosa County, Florida, asked how voting machine companies could be expected to comply with the new standards when the commission has yet to certify a system per its current guidelines, which were last revised in 2021. 'And they're going to what, ramp up production and provide voting equipment and all that for all 50 states and five territories?' Lux asked. Related Stories 4/24/2025 4/2/2025 An election official from Utah questioned how adding a proof-of-citizenship requirement to the commission's national mail voter registration form might affect Native American communities. The commissioners encouraged officials to share their concerns with them. 'Wherever we end up in this process, my goal is to provide the least disruption to the states, to mitigate any impact on you and your voting systems,' said Donald Palmer, chair of the Election Assistance Commission. Trump has long held that U.S. elections are not secure. In his 'Under the Constitution, state governments must safeguard American elections in compliance with Federal laws that protect Americans' voting rights and guard against dilution by illegal voting, discrimination, fraud, and other forms of malfeasance and error,' Trump wrote. 'Yet the United States has not adequately enforced Federal election requirements that, for example, prohibit States from counting ballots received after Election Day or prohibit non-citizens from registering to vote.' The American Civil Liberties Union, League of Women Voters, and NAACP said the president's order is unlawful. 'Only Congress, not the President, can alter or supersede state procedures governing federal elections, including voter registration procedures. Forcing states to require documentary proof of citizenship would therefore require congressional action,' the organizations wrote in a March 27 letter to the Election Assistance Commission. Those voting rights groups and the Democratic Party have challenged the executive order in court, arguing that it oversteps Trump's authority as president. As the commission gathered to discuss the directive, a federal judge 'Our Constitution entrusts Congress and the States—not the President—with the authority to regulate federal elections,' District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly wrote in issuing the The judge noted that Congress is currently considering legislation that would enact several of the changes the president directed. 'And no statutory delegation of authority to the Executive Branch permits the President to short-circuit Congress's deliberative process by executive order.' Stephen Miller, White House deputy chief of staff for policy, The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Yahoo
24-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Trump's executive order on voting blocked by federal judge amid flurry of legal setbacks
A federal judge in Washington, D.C., on Thursday blocked a portion of President Donald Trump's executive order on election integrity, specifically provisions related to providing documentary proof of citizenship before being allowed to register to vote. Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia handed down the order in response to lawsuits filed by three separate groups of plaintiffs over five different provisions in a March 25 Trump executive order relating to election integrity. While Kollar-Kotelly dismissed requests to block three of the provisions, requests to block two other provisions pertaining to a proof of citizenship requirement for voters were granted. The first blocked provision sought to compel the Election Assistance Commission to amend standardized national voter registration forms to require documentary proof of citizenship. The second sought to require federal agencies offering voter registration to people on public assistance to "assess" the individual's citizenship status before doing so. Citizenship Voter Registration Bill Is 'Common Sense,' Gop Lawmaker Argues "Our Constitution entrusts Congress and the States — not the President — with the authority to regulate federal elections. Consistent with that allocation of power, Congress is currently debating legislation that would effect many of the changes the President purports to order," Kollar-Kotelly, a Clinton-appointee, wrote in her order. "No statutory delegation of authority to the Executive Branch permits the President to short-circuit Congress's deliberative process by executive order." Kollar-Kotelly said she would not block the other provisions that the groups sought to challenge, which cover mail-in ballots and data collection on citizenship status, calling the challenges "premature" and indicating they would be best challenged at the state level. Read On The Fox News App Earlier this month, the Republican-led House of Representatives passed a bill requiring proof-of-citizenship to vote in federal elections. The measure still must pass the Senate, however, before the president can sign it into law. Top Official Applauds Red State's Historic Legislation Requiring Proof Of Citizenship To Vote: 'Huge Winners' Meanwhile, 25 states are considering some form of proof-of-citizenship legislation, according to the Voting Rights Lab, which is tracking such legislation. In total, 15 state constitutions have explicit prohibitions against non-citizen voting. In addition to Trump's proof-of-citizenship orders getting shot down, two other federal judges from Maryland and New Hampshire also shot down additional orders from the president related to ending diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs in K-12 public schools on Thursday. The rulings followed lawsuits filed by the National Education Association, the American Civil Liberties Union and the Maryland chapter of the American Federation of Teachers. The groups argued that making federal funding contingent on whether educators squash their DEI programs violates First Amendment rights granted by the Constitution. Click To Get The Fox News App Fox News Digital reached out to the White House for comment on this article but did not receive a response in time for article source: Trump's executive order on voting blocked by federal judge amid flurry of legal setbacks
