A judge on Thursday declined to block an executive order by Donald Trump that tightens rules on mail-in voting, a setback for the Democratic Party, which argued the measure could disenfranchise millions of voters.
The decision comes as Trump’s Republicans face a challenging battle to retain control of both houses of Congress in the upcoming November midterm elections. Trump has consistently promoted the false claim that his 2020 election defeat was due to widespread voter fraud and has been a vocal critic of voting by mail.
The executive order, signed by Trump on March 31, instructed his administration to compile a list of confirmed US citizens eligible to vote in each state. It also mandated the use of federal data to assist state election officials in verifying voter eligibility. Furthermore, it required the U.S. Postal Service to deliver ballots exclusively to voters on each state’s approved mail-in ballot list and obliged states to preserve election-related records for five years.
Plaintiffs, including New York’s Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, had urged Washington-based U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols to issue a preliminary injunction. They contended that the order infringed upon individual states’ constitutional rights to regulate elections.
Democrats argued that the executive order’s directive for agencies to use data from the Department of Homeland Security and the Social Security Administration to create “state citizenship lists” risked improperly excluding lawfully registered voters, citing concerns that these data sources can be outdated or contain errors.
The Justice Department countered that the litigation was premature, given that federal agencies had not yet implemented the executive order. Judge Nichols had appeared sympathetic to this argument during oral arguments on May 14. A coalition of Democratic states has also filed a similar lawsuit challenging the executive order in federal court in Boston.
