Trump's Latest Executive Order Targets Voting Rights—And It's Already Falling Apart in Court

The Constitution Is Pretty Clear on This One

When the Constitution's framers wrote Article 1, Section 4, Clause 1—the Elections Clause—they weren't being subtle. "The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations."

Translation: The president has no role in federal elections. States run elections. Congress can pass laws about elections. The executive branch? Not mentioned.

But that hasn't stopped Donald Trump from issuing Executive Order 14399 on March 31, his latest attempt to rewrite election law with a pen stroke. The order tries to impose new voter eligibility tests and restrictions on mail-in voting in time to disrupt state election administration before November's general election.

A Solution in Search of a Problem

Here's the thing about voter fraud in America: it's statistically insignificant. Oregon, which has conducted all-mail elections since 1995, cast about 61 million ballots between 2000 and 2019. The state secured 38 voter fraud criminal convictions during that period. That's a fraud rate of 0.00006 percent.

Nationwide, about 30 percent of voters cast ballots by mail in 2024. Eight states plus D.C. conduct every election by mail. Thirteen other states allow smaller localities to do the same. The system works.

"Voter fraud in the United States has been and remains statistically insignificant," according to election administration experts. The real threats to election integrity are misinformation, cyberattacks, and political violence—not phantom legions of ineligible voters that exist only in Trump's imagination.

Legal Experts Call It Weak and Chaotic

Richard Hasen, a professor of law and political science at UCLA School of Law, didn't mince words about the executive order's actual purpose. "This EO seems so weak and poorly drafted that I think the purpose is not to implement but to sow more chaos around elections," he told The American Prospect. It's "the latest in a string of things meant to discourage voting, sow doubt in the integrity of the election process, and cause Trump's supporters to question the legitimacy of Democratic victories."

The administration's track record supports that assessment. Trump issued a similar executive order last year attempting to introduce citizenship voting requirements by presidential fiat. Federal courts dismissed it. "Note that the Trump administration did not seek to appeal most of the preliminary injunctions that were issued against his last EO on voting," Hasen points out. "That suggests they knew they had a weak hand."

Five Lawsuits and Counting

The legal pushback was immediate. Five separate lawsuits have already been filed challenging the executive order:

• The NAACP, Common Cause, Black Voters Matter, and Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law filed suit this past weekend
• The League of Women Voters is leading one coalition of voting rights advocates
• The League of United Latin American Citizens is leading another
• House Speaker Hakeem Jeffries and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer joined a suit
• Twenty-three state attorneys general, including Oregon, are challenging the order

The League of Women Voters' lawsuit calls the executive order an "extraordinary and abusive assertion of executive power." That's putting it mildly.

The Constitutional Case Is Airtight

The executive order attempts to carve out new election administration powers from existing laws like the Help America Vote Act and the National Voter Registration Act. But those laws were passed by Congress—which actually has constitutional authority over federal elections—not invented by presidential decree.

States also have additional protections under the Tenth Amendment, which reserves powers not delegated to the federal government "to the states respectively, or to the people." Election administration is one of those powers. It's not controversial. It's not broken. And it's definitely not the president's job.

The Real Goal: Undermining Democracy

Trump's pattern is clear. Whenever electoral defeat confronts him, he conjures up hair-raising scenarios about voter fraud. He repeats lies about ineligible voters. He attacks the legitimacy of the democratic process itself.

This executive order follows that playbook. It's not designed to solve a real problem—voter fraud remains vanishingly rare. It's designed to create chaos, suppress turnout, and give Trump's supporters a pretext to reject election results they don't like.

Oregon is already prepping for its May 19 statewide primary. Other states, including Texas, Mississippi, and Illinois, have already held their primaries. State election officials know what they're doing. They've been doing it successfully for decades.

What they don't need is a president with authoritarian impulses trying to seize control of a system that the Constitution explicitly placed beyond his reach.

The courts will almost certainly strike down this executive order, just like they did the last one. But the damage to public confidence in elections—the real goal all along—will linger. That's the point.