President Trump Issues Executive Order on Election Integrity: What's in It?

President Trump has, since the 2016 election and especially after the 2020 election, expressed grave concern about the integrity of American elections. (In that, he has a lot of company.) During the 2024 campaign, he spoke on the matter regularly, vowing to restore the public's faith in our elections.

On Tuesday, President Donald Trump issued an executive order titled "Preserving and Protecting the Integrity of American Elections," aimed at doing precisely that. The Purpose and Policy statement reads in part:

Despite pioneering self-government, the United States now fails to enforce basic and necessary election protections employed by modern, developed nations, as well as those still developing. India and Brazil, for example, are tying voter identification to a biometric database, while the United States largely relies on self-attestation for citizenship. In tabulating votes, Germany and Canada require use of paper ballots, counted in public by local officials, which substantially reduces the number of disputes as compared to the American patchwork of voting methods that can lead to basic chain-of-custody problems. Further, while countries like Denmark and Sweden sensibly limit mail-in voting to those unable to vote in person and do not count late-arriving votes regardless of the date of postmark, many American elections now feature mass voting by mail, with many officials accepting ballots without postmarks or those received well after Election Day.

Mass voting by mail is precisely what many jurisdictions have now, my own former home of Colorado among them, and many - this writer included - share the president's distrust of vote-by-mail.

The EO discusses the integrity of voter registration:

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 issued under 52 U.S.C. 20508:
(A) documentary proof of United States citizenship, consistent with 52 U.S.C. 20508(b)(3); and
(B) a State or local official to record on the form the type of document that the applicant presented as documentary proof of United States citizenship, including the date of the document’s issuance, the date of the document’s expiration (if any), the office that issued the document, and any unique identification number associated with the document as required by the criteria in 52 U.S.C. 21083(a)(5)(A), while taking appropriate measures to ensure information security.

And, there is a section strong-arming the states into strictly abiding by federal election laws:

The Election Assistance Commission shall, pursuant to 52 U.S.C. 21003(b)(3)and 21142(c) and consistent with applicable law, take all appropriate action to cease providing Federal funds to States that do not comply with the Federal laws set forth in 52 U.S.C. 21145, including the requirement in 52 U.S.C. 20505(a)(1) that States accept and use the national mail voter registration form issued pursuant to 52 U.S.C. 20508(a)(1), including any requirement for documentary proof of United States citizenship adopted pursuant to section 2(a)(ii) of this order.

And much more.

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The interesting bit about the voter registration section is the requirement that any mail voter registration form submitted must include proof of citizenship, such as a passport or a state-issued ID that meets the REAL ID Act standard. According to one account, within the past week, 124 million Americans are still lacking REAL ID identification. Regardless, a citizenship verification would seem to be a vital part of an overall election integrity program - as would a requirement to show a state-issued photo identification before voting.

Permanent solutions to the issues with our elections will require Congress to act. Also, under the Constitution, the states have broad authority over elections. This is a system with a lot of moving parts, and this EO will address some of the issues - but there's still a lot more work to be done.

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