President Trump signed executive Order On Tuesday he intends to impose new federal controls on voting by mail in states like California, reiterating his long-held but unfounded claim that mail-in ballots are a source of widespread fraud in US elections.
California leaders immediately responded with promises to fight the order in court. He said that while mail ballots are a safe way to vote that millions of Californians rely on, Trump’s order violates the state’s constitutional right to administer elections as he sees fit, and it amounts to an “illegal power grab” ahead of the midterm elections that has the potential to cause significant damage to his party.
The order directs the United States Postal Service to take control of mail voting by designing new envelopes with special bar codes that will allow the federal government to ensure that such ballots go only to eligible voters, and that only eligible voters return such ballots.
If states plan to use the federal mail system to send or receive ballots, they are required to submit them to the USPS process, and such ballots must be submitted to the USPS list of eligible voters before they pass through the mail system.
It also requires the Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, and the Social Security Administration to “compile and transmit to the chief election officer of each state a list of persons certified to be citizens of the United States, who will be over the age of 18 years at the time of the upcoming federal election, and who will maintain residence in the subject state.”
The order says those lists will be drawn from federal citizenship and naturalization records, Social Security records and “other relevant federal databases” and that the USPS will be barred from circulating ballots that do not match those lists.
“Secure ballot envelope identifiers provide a reliable, auditable mechanism to enforce federal law without unnecessarily burdening or infringing on the rights of eligible voters,” the order states. “Unique ballot envelope identifiers, such as bar codes, enable confirmation that only citizens receive and cast ballots, reducing the risk of fraud and protecting the integrity of federal elections.”
Trump – who recently voted by mail himself in Florida – framed the order as a solution to the “massive fraud” currently plaguing US elections, which he did not support with evidence.
“The fraud in mail-in voting is legendary. What’s happening is terrible,” Trump said.
“He’s going to make sure that mail-in ballots are secure and accurate,” said Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, who attended with Trump and whose agency is required to be involved in coordinating the new voting measures in the order.
California officials criticized the president for attacking and undermining election integrity rather than promoting it, and said they would prevent the order from taking effect.
“President Trump’s executive order marks a dangerous and unprecedented escalation in his ongoing attacks on our elections. The power to regulate elections belongs to the states and Congress – they have no role. We blocked his previous executive order on elections in court, and we are ready to stop him again,” said California Atty. General Rob Bonta.
“The reality is that President Trump and congressional Republicans see the writing on the wall – that they are likely to lose in the upcoming midterms – and they are pushing to make it harder for people to vote,” Bonta said. “We will not sit idly by.”
Senator Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) said in a statement to The Times that Trump’s actions were “a clear and present danger to our democracy,” that he would “use every possible tool to stop them,” and that he expected “immediate legal challenges to protect our free and fair elections.”
“Instead of focusing on reducing the costs of energy, groceries and health care, Donald Trump is desperately trying to capture and rig our elections and avoid accountability in November. This executive order is a blatant, unconstitutional abuse of power,” said Padilla, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Committee on Rules and Administration.
He said, “The President and the Department of Homeland Security have no authority to take over federal elections or direct the independent Postal Service to undermine mail and absentee voting, which is relied upon by nearly 50 million Americans in 2024.” “A decade of lies about election fraud doesn’t change the Constitution.”
“Between an unauthorized war abroad and ICE’s increasingly dictatorial actions here at home, Trump is attempting yet another illegal power grab,” Padilla said.
The vast majority of Californians vote by mail. In the state’s 2025 special election on Proposition 50, the state’s mid-decade redistricting measure, about 89% of votes were cast by mail, according to the office of California Secretary of State Shirley Weber — or about 10.3 million of the approximately 11.6 million votes cast.
Trump has long criticized mail-in ballots — without evidence — as a source of fraud and a factor in his losing the 2020 election to President Biden, which he still argues was illegitimate.
Election experts, voting rights advocates, local election officials and other California leaders have dismissed those claims as baseless and false. They are also preparing for Trump to take action to reduce such turnout.
Padilla had previously warned colleagues that he would force states to vote on any attempt by Trump to declare a national emergency to gain control of this year’s midterm elections, forcing them to either co-sign the power grab or oppose it.
Critics of mail ballots are also actively working to end or curtail the practice. Just last week, the U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments in a case in which the Republican Party challenged a Mississippi law that allows ballots to be accepted and counted when they arrive up to five days after Election Day.
During those arguments, the court’s six conservatives appeared poised to rule that federal law requires ballots to be received by Election Day to be considered valid.
Weber, California’s top elections official, has warned that attacks on mail-in voting threaten to undermine the system the state has spent years building around universal mail voting.
Trump’s executive order is the latest front in his years-long campaign attacking the integrity of US elections – which has contributed to a steep decline in voter confidence in US elections.
On Tuesday, Trump said his order was drafted by “great legal minds” and would survive any legal challenge unless a “rogue” judge improperly rules against it.
“We want honest voting in our country,” he said.
Rick Hasen, an election law expert and director of the Safeguarding Democracy Project at UCLA Law, argued otherwise in a post Tuesday, saying that an earlier executive order placing new federal controls on elections had been blocked in court, and “is unlikely to fare better than this.”
“To put it plainly: The order would use the USPS, which is not under the direct control of the President, to interfere with the lawful transmission of a state’s ballots. If the state does not comply with these rules, federal law would interfere with the state’s conduct of its own elections,” Hassan wrote. “The President doesn’t have the authority to do that.”
