States take aim at Trump's ‘completely unlawful’ crackdown on mail-in voting

(CN) — A coalition of 23 states are suing the Trump administration over the president’s executive order to overhaul elections by restricting mail-in ballots, adding to a growing pile of lawsuits challenging the order as an affront to separation of powers.

California Attorney General Rob Bonta announced the latest lawsuit, filed in Massachusetts federal court, at a press conference on Friday. He said President Donald Trump’s executive order is a “blatant” political move aimed at suppressing voter turnout for the midterm elections amid dismal polling on issues like immigration, the economy and the Iran war.

“If everyone who is eligible to vote has that opportunity to participate to vote in the way that they wish, he will get crushed and he knows that,” Bonta said. “So he’s issuing this unconstitutional order to try to change the outcome. He can’t; it is completely unlawful.”

Trump signed the scrutinized executive order on Tuesday. Titled “Ensuring Citizenship Verification and Integrity in Federal Elections,” the order would create lists of U.S. citizens eligible to vote in each state and instructs the U.S. Postal Service to send mail ballots only to verified voters.

It also threatens criminal investigations against election officials and withholding federal funds from states that don’t “bend the knee to the president’s will,” Bonta said.

“The president’s latest attempt to interfere with the states’ administration of their elections is as unprecedented as it is unconstitutional,” the states claim in the 49-page complaint. “Under our Constitution, the president has no authority to restrict voter eligibility or mail voting to lists of voters pre-authorized by the federal government.”

Bonta added that Friday’s lawsuit is the 66th time he has sued the second Trump administration.

“Only Democrat politicians and operatives would be upset about lawful efforts to secure American elections and ensure only eligible American citizens are casting ballots,” White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said in a statement to Courthouse News. “President Trump campaigned on securing our elections and the American people sent him back to the White House to get the job done.”

Many of the suing states have dealt with this issue before. Last April, several sued Trump over another executive order that required proof of citizenship and demanded all ballots be received by Election Day.

In that lawsuit, the states prevailed. A federal judge ruled that the order from Trump was “blatantly unconstitutional.”

“Nothing about the Constitution has changed since then,” Bonta said Friday. “This order is just as illegal as the first one, but the president seems to embrace a philosophy of, ‘If at first you don’t succeed, break the law again.’”

New York Attorney General Letitia James, who is part of the coalition, said the states are asking the court to strike down Trump’s order and prevent the government from acting on it.

“Free and fair elections are the cornerstone of our democracy, and no president has the power to rewrite the rules on his own," James said in a press release. “This executive order is yet another attempt to disenfranchise voters and sow distrust in our electoral system as we head into the next election cycle. Our elections are and always have been free, fair, and secure, and we will not allow this administration to attack the very foundation of our nation."

The coalition claims Trump’s demands would create widespread voter confusion amid the last-minute nature of the sweeping changes as several primary elections around the country have already kicked off. Bonta said the regulations have much potential for “mischief and abuse” and claimed the lists would indefinitely cause some voters to become disenfranchised.

“It will definitely be inaccurate,” Bonta said. “It’s just how inaccurate will it be and how many people who have the right to vote will have their vote suppressed based on its inaccuracies, whether unintentional or, frankly, intentional?”

The states’ Friday lawsuit is at least the third challenging Trump’s latest executive order. Congressional Democrats filed their own complaint on Wednesday, arguing that Trump’s order unlawfully rips power over elections from the states to the White House.

“President Trump has tried again and again to rewrite election rules for his own perceived partisan advantage,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries argue in the complaint. “If only he could ban mail voting — a favorite scapegoat for his 2020 electoral defeat — and impose other voting restrictions, he has proclaimed, Republicans will “never lose a race — for 50 years.”

A coalition led by the League of Women Voters filed a similar challenge to Trump’s order on Thursday, warning that it “displaces the roles that the Constitution and federal law assign to the states and Congress.”

The order is Trump’s latest attempt to kneecap mail-in voting, a practice he has repeatedly and baselessly claimed is rife with fraud since his 2020 election loss. Despite referring to the practice as “mail-in cheating” as recently as March, Trump himself voted by mail in a Florida special election last month.

“I used a mail-in ballot,” Trump admitted when pressed about it on March 26. “Because I’m president of the United States.”

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