President Donald Trump is in a race against time. |
Since returning to office last year, Trump has repeatedly tried to remake American elections, including by issuing two executive orders that would erect new federal rules and restrictions on voting and various aspects of elections. Voting rights advocates and a variety of states have filed lawsuits that have already frozen key tentpoles of Trump’s first executive order on voting and could do the same for the second. If Trump wants to see these measures impact this November’s elections, his administration has to move fast. |
In recent days, the Trump administration has taken new steps to erect the architecture it would need to implement key pieces of the president’s most recent election executive order, which called in March for the Department of Homeland Security to create “State Citizenship Lists” of all U.S. citizens who are over 18. |
In response to the order, the Department of Homeland Security unveiled plans to set up a special system by the end of this month — then revised its plans just days later, showing how quickly the administration is moving to try and put these measures in place. |
The executive order also calls on the U.S. Postal Service to set up a new process where it could block voters from receiving mail-in ballots if they are not on a vetted list provided to the federal government 60 days before an election, and the agency has proposed new rules to do so. Many election officials say the move could cause chaos, and is beyond the president’s authority. |
Setting aside the constitutional questions around the efforts, voting rights advocates say that it could be practically very difficult for the agencies involved to create a workable system before the November election. |
“Elections are like a battleship, it’s not like you can turn them around on the fly,” said Rick Hasen, a UCLA political science professor and director of the Safeguarding Democracy Project. “It seems exceedingly unlikely that any of this will be in place by November.” |
The administration’s court filings hint at some of the difficulties. |
On Friday, June 5, the Trump administration filed a four-paragraph notice to a court in Boston overseeing a legal challenge to the March executive order. In that notice, the Department of Homeland Security said it was moving ahead with plans to allow states to check voter eligibility by submitting their entire voter lists to a federal database known as Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements, or SAVE. |
It also said the department would create a portal that would allow state election officials to “securely access citizenship-related data” from the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service, the Social Security Administration, and the U.S. Department of State — by June 30. |
But three days later, this past Monday, the Trump administration changed plans and filed a new notice with the court, outlining a new memorandum rescinding the previously stated policies. Per the notice, that memo walks back some of the specifics of the earlier implementation plan, promising only to provide by June 30 “a mechanism for States to receive secure, state-focused citizenship-related information from each agency.” |
The previously mentioned portal would come sometime later this year, the revised notice said, and the new memo also rescinded the proposal that would let states submit their voter rolls to SAVE because, the notice said, that approach wasn’t specifically called for in the executive order. |
Some states have already used the system — which was previously used to verify immigrants’ eligibility for benefits — to check voter eligibility after the administration revamped the database and vigorously encouraged states to do so, but others have questioned the accuracy of the SAVE system and declined to use it. |
The initial notice also said that the Homeland Security department “contemplates working with” the U.S. Postal Service to access its data on mail ballots and use it to “monitor mail-in and absentee ballot flows, identify anomalies that may suggest voter fraud or misuse, and generate authorized investigative leads.” |
In the second notice, the administration instead told the court the two agencies were having “preliminary conversations” on potential data-sharing, and decisions would be contingent on final legal and policy determinations. |
Beyond the logistical challenges, the proposals are facing legal challenges that could block them from taking effect. A coalition of Democratic party committees and some nonprofit groups have challenged the Trump executive order as unconstitutional. And while a federal judge in Washington, D.C. declined to immediately halt major provisions in that case, a federal judge in Boston could still do so. That judge expressed concerns last month during a hearing on a separate case brought by Democratic officials from twenty-three states, the District of Columbia, and a different group of nonprofits, and is expected to rule soon. |
John Davisson, deputy director at the Electronic Privacy Information Center, called the latest Trump administration move “a five-alarm fire for the protection of privacy and voting rights” across the country. |
“Building a citizenship registry is beyond the federal government's power, illegal under the Privacy Act, impossible to construct without introducing catastrophic error, and guaranteed to cause untold numbers of perfectly legal voters to be denied their right to vote if implemented,” he said. |
The Trump administration says its efforts are a way to integrate federal systems to help ensure there is no fraud in the country’s electoral system. |
The Department of Homeland Security didn’t respond to a request for comment. In April, Lauren Bis, a spokesperson, said SAVE “is a critical tool for state and local governments to safeguard the integrity of elections across the country.” The Trump administration has sued a majority of U.S. states in an effort to secure access to their voter registration databases. |
Votebeat Brunch: Is your election rigged? Separating fact from fiction |
California’s primary election set off a new wave of unsubstantiated allegations — including from Trump — that the vote was rigged. To separate fact from fiction, Votebeat spoke to Renee DiResta, an associate research professor at Georgetown University’s McCourt School of Public Policy and an expert in disinformation. DiResta served for five years as technical research manager at the Stanford Internet Observatory and co-led a nonpartisan Election Integrity Partnership that studied misinformation during the 2020 election. The interview was conducted in writing and has been lightly edited for clarity, brevity, and style. |
Q: The California election has triggered a new flood of unsupported allegations that the vote is rigged. What advice do you have for voters trying to separate fact from fiction? |
Many election rumors spread because they are emotionally compelling, not because they’re supported by facts. When people encounter a claim that an election was “rigged,” they should ask a few questions: |
- What is the original source of the claim? |
- Is there any evidence, or just screenshots, anecdotes, or speculation? “It just seems weird” isn’t evidence. |
- Have election officials, courts, or independent observers said anything? |
- Do multiple credible sources support the claim? |
People should also be careful about treating isolated irregularities as proof of widespread fraud. Every election has some mistakes, and administrative errors. Those are not automatically evidence that they were manipulated. Officials will often explain what happened quickly, but you sometimes have to go check because their posts generally don’t go viral. A useful rule of thumb is: The stronger the claim, the stronger the evidence must be. |
Q: What are some tools people can use to get reliable information amid a flood of misinformation? |
A good starting point is official election information from state and local election offices, since they can provide direct information about procedures, vote counting, and certification, and they know the local rules better than anyone else. Fact checks are helpful as well. Keep in mind that getting answers takes time. Asking an AI for facts isn’t going to get you an immediate answer in most cases because it has to work with what’s out there, too. Asking Grok or another AI can help, but it’s sometimes dependent on how recent or specific the issue is. Be wary and double check, or check again later. |
Q: Is there more state and federal officials should be doing to address election misinformation? |
Election officials who communicate quickly and responsively about voting procedures, counting, audits, and certification tend to leave less room for rumors to thrive. Communicating in advance can help, too. And strengthening influencer disclosure rules would go a long way toward shifting incentives. |
