New Jersey officials condemned an executive order issued by President Donald Trump this week that purported to direct the U.S. Postal Service not to deliver mail-in ballots sent by individuals who do not appear on a federal registry, alarming voting advocates and elected officials.
Critics say the order is the latest in a series of attempts by the Trump administration to restrict voting to gain a partisan advantage in the upcoming midterm elections, where the president’s growing unpopularity is expected to cost Republicans congressional majorities in the House and possibly the Senate.
“Any changes to election rules cannot be made by the President through a blatantly unlawful executive order that seeks to disenfranchise voters in the name of debunked conspiracy theories about widespread election fraud,” said New Jersey Attorney General Jen Davenport. “This is a clear power grab.”
Davenport said her office was “exploring all options to fight this extreme overreach and protect New Jersey voters.” Some Democratic groups, including the Democratic National Committee, filed a federal lawsuit against the order in Washington, D.C., late Wednesday.
Trump’s order purports to create a national voter list within the U.S. Department of Homeland Security using private information maintained by the Social Security Administration.
It directs the Postal Service not to deliver legally cast ballots if an individual does not appear on the list, which would be finalized at least 60 days before an election — well before voter registration and mail ballot issuance deadlines in New Jersey and a host of other states.
The order also threatens to withhold federal funding from states that do not submit and criminal prosecutions for individual state and local officials.
The president and executive branch have no role in election administration. The U.S. Constitution leaves election rules to states and, if they choose to intervene, Congress.
“Our vote-by-mail system works. Millions of New Jerseyans — Republicans, Democrats, and unaffiliated voters alike — rely on it. The president himself has cast ballots by mail,” said Gov. Mikie Sherrill. “This order does nothing to strengthen election integrity and is designed to make it harder for eligible citizens to vote.”
Sherrill, a Democrat who took office in January, has clashed with the Trump administration over immigration enforcement, a new migrant jail proposed for Roxbury, and the administration’s push to get private voter data from the New Jersey secretary of state.
Mail voting has been at the center of Trump’s false claims of widespread voter fraud, including his 2020 election loss to Joe Biden. Despite that, Trump votes by mail, including a postal ballot he cast in Florida last month.
“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,” White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said in a statement.
Voters of both major parties return mail ballots at similar rates, but because more Democrats request mail ballots, they account for a larger slice of the party’s votes.
“Let’s be clear: any problem with mail-in ballots would be caused by Trump himself. I will take every action available to protect New Jerseyans’ fundamental voting rights,” Sherrill said.
Civil rights groups called the order a power grab, but one they said had little chance of successfully thwarting fair elections. Still, American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey supervising attorney Liza Weisberg warned the measure could cause harm through fear alone.
“These kinds of power grabs from the president have some sort of role in making people feel fearful of participating in elections, and I think that’s an important thing to push back on,” she said. “Voters should feel as confident today as they did yesterday about elections in New Jersey, about mail voting in New Jersey, about mail voting all across the country.”
Nuzhat Chowdhury, director of the New Jersey Institute for Social Justice’s democracy and justice program, stressed the security of mail voting.
“Especially in New Jersey, we have many safeguards to ensure that only eligible voters are voting in every election,” she said. “Vote by mail is safe. It’s widely used, and it’s a decision that New Jersey gets to make, not the president.”
Trump’s latest order to restrict mail voting follows other failed efforts to tip the scales through rulemaking.
Courts have previously struck down orders that would have required voters to provide a narrow set of documents to prove citizenship and that all ballots be received by Election Day, contrary to rules in New Jersey and other states that provide grace periods for mail ballots sent before polls close.
Judges have also struck down demands for states’ voter rolls and a Trump order that purported to require voters to show passports or similar documents at the polls to cast their ballots as unconstitutional.
The administration’s legislative efforts to restrict voting have floundered. Trump failed to secure enough votes to pass federal legislation to institute strict voter ID laws that would bar those without a passport or birth certificate matching their name from voting.
Critics fear that proposal, which would not allow driver’s licenses to serve as voter ID, would disenfranchise married women who had changed their surname and Americans who do not have passports. About half the country’s residents do not.
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