A Judge Blocked Key Portions of Trump’s Anti-Voting Executive Order, But DOJ and States Continue Anti-Democracy Agenda

With their preferred presidential candidate having won the 2024 election, it might seem that the far-right election denial movement has retreated. But the anti-democratic push to undermine trust in our elections is alive and well, both in states across the country and at the highest levels of office, where the Trump Department of Justice is abandoning actual voting-rights protection in favor of elevating false claims about voter fraud. 

In the last few months, the Justice Department has sued North Carolina, alleging the state does not properly maintain its voter rolls. The agency threatened to cut federal funding to the Wisconsin Elections Commission, claiming the state did not have an adequate system for lodging voter complaints. In Colorado, it demanded the state turn over all records related to the 2024 election and preserve records related to the 2020 vote. As the Center for Election Innovation & Research’s David Becker told the Associated Press, the department’s shift is like “the police department prioritizing jaywalking over murder investigations.” 

These actions are part of the larger right-wing strategy to harness the power of the election denial movement for political gain by convincing Americans that U.S. elections are riddled with fraud and error. The tactics we outlined in the 2024 Anti-Democracy Playbook were core components of conservative activists’ and politicians’ strategy ahead of the 2024 election. And for his part, President Trump, despite having won, is still pushing the myth of widespread voter fraud and perpetuating xenophobic lies about election security.

In March, the president signed an executive order that includes provisions requiring states to decertify voting machines, give the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) access to voter data, and enact new restrictions on military and overseas voting. It also required written proof of citizenship to register to vote and barred the counting of mail-in ballots received after Election Day. Earlier this month, a federal judge blocked those latter two portions, finding that the written proof-of-citizenship requirements would burden states with new and expensive procedures and impede people from registering to vote. 

While the ruling is an important check on Trump’s attempt to usurp election administration authority, several states have already adopted similar measures. American Oversight has been investigating these efforts to undermine faith in the fairness of elections and make it harder for people, especially people of color, to vote.

In the lead-up to the 2024 election, Trump and his supporters repeatedly invoked racist fears to advance the false claim that noncitizens are coming to the United States en masse to illegally vote. This is not true: Studies have found that voting by noncitizens in federal elections — something prohibited by law — is “vanishingly rare.” Nonetheless, before Election Day, at least eight lawsuits were filed by Trump allies that alleged inaccurate voter rolls could permit noncitizens to illegally vote. Trump and House Speaker Mike Johnson pushed for a redundant bill that would ban non-citizens from voting, although it did not pass. Trump’s executive order invoked the same false threat by requiring people to bring proof of citizenship to register to vote. The measure would have made it harder for eligible voters to register, as many people do not have easy access to the documents required to prove citizenship. 

Trump has also been pushing the idea that mail-in ballots are rife for fraud since the 2020 election. In the lead-up to Election Day that year, he stoked fears about the increased use of voting by mail spurred by the Covid-19 pandemic. Those distorted perceptions about voting by mail persisted through the 2022 midterms — when voters and election workers reported incidents of intimidation and harassment by observers who reportedly filmed people dropping off their ballots at vote-by-mail locations — and into 2024.

Last year, the Republican National Committee intervened in a lawsuit filed by the Black Political Empowerment Project on behalf of 10 voting rights groups, challenging a Pennsylvania law that disqualifies mail-in ballots that have missing or incorrect dates on the outer envelope. In Nevada and Mississippi, the RNC challenged laws permitting mail-in ballots to be counted after Election Day if the ballots are postmarked before polls close. Trump’s executive order picked up where these lawsuits left off, barring states from counting ballots mailed before but received after Election Day as well as prohibiting voters from fixing mistakes made on mail-in ballots. 

While the recent ruling blocking provisions in the order allows the 19 states that challenged it to continue to count ballots received after Election Day, many states have pushed for or enacted similar measures that still threaten the right to vote. Arizona, New Hampshire, and Louisiana have passed laws requiring proof of citizenship to register to vote, although each law is being challenged in court. Last year, the Trump-aligned majority on the Georgia State Election Board approved sending all counties a sign saying “U.S. CITIZENS ONLY” and urging election officials to display them at polling locations. In November 2024, eight states — Idaho, Iowa, Kentucky, Missouri, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Wisconsin — had constitutional amendments on their ballots intended to limit voting to American citizens. All eight measures passed. The anti-immigrant rhetoric surrounding these measures can have a profound chilling effect on voter turnout in communities of color and among naturalized citizens.

Before the 2024 election, some states also touted efforts (including those already required by law) to remove noncitizens from voter rolls. Election experts warned that publicizing such routine maintenance would bolster fears about what amounts to a nearly nonexistent problem. For example, Gov. Greg Abbott issued a press release that August touting Texas’ removal of more than 6,500 “noncitizens” from the lists, claiming that nearly 2,000 had a voting history. Reporting showed that only a fraction of those removed were non-citizens. Most of the 6,500 were people who did not receive or respond to letters informing them there were questions regarding their citizenship. American Oversight obtained records backing up this reporting, showing that 379 non-citizens were removed between 2021 and 2023, and that 5,440 eligible voters were removed because they did not respond to the letters. Along with other watchdog and voting rights groups, American Oversight sent a letter to Texas’ secretary of state, flagging that many could have been mistakenly removed. 

Several states have also adopted laws targeting vote by mail. A 2021 Florida law, SB 90, requires voters to re-register every election cycle to receive mail ballots. As a result, the number of mail-in ballots requested has significantly dropped. SB 90 also imposed new voter-ID requirements to vote by mail. North Carolina’s SB 747 placed new restrictions on voting by mail, requiring all ballots to be received before polling locations close on Election Day. 

Last year, American Oversight launched an investigation into the connection between anti-immigrant rhetoric and election denialism, filing dozens of public records requests to investigate how anti-democracy activists and politicians are deploying the tactic. American Oversight also published The 2024 Anti-Democracy Playbook, a comprehensive look at the methods being used to suppress votes and undermine confidence in democracy. 

As the Trump administration continues to stoke unfounded fears of widespread fraud and insecure elections, American Oversight has filed Freedom of Information Act requests to investigate. We’ve asked election offices in Arizona, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, and Texas for external communications, directives, and agreements with the federal government related to Trump’s executive order. We also requested similar records from the Social Security Administration, U.S. Elections Assistance Commission, Department of Justice, Department of Defense, and the United States Digital Service.