President Donald Trump signed a sweeping executive order Tuesday targeting mail-in voting, escalating his administration’s effort to assert federal control over elections that the Constitution explicitly delegates to the states.
The order directs the Department of Homeland Security and the Social Security Administration to compile lists of voting-age American citizens in each state and share those lists with state election officials. It also requires the U.S. Postal Service to send and receive only ballots that include tracking barcodes, and mandates that states notify the Postal Service at least 90 days before federal elections if they plan to allow mail-in voting.
“I think this will help a lot with elections,” Trump said after signing the order.
Critics immediately pushed back. U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla, a California Democrat, called the move a direct attack on democratic participation. “Instead of focusing on lowering the cost of energy, groceries, and health care, Donald Trump is desperately attempting to take over and rig our elections and avoid accountability in November,” Padilla said in a statement. “This executive order is a blatant, unconstitutional abuse of power.”
The order arrives with significant legal baggage. In 2025, Trump signed a separate executive order attempting to unilaterally impose a proof-of-citizenship requirement for federal elections. Federal courts blocked that order. Legal scholars and voting rights advocates expect this latest action to face similar challenges.
Central to the new order is the expanded use of DHS’s SAVE system, a program designed to verify immigration status and citizenship. DHS has previously invited states to run voter rolls through SAVE, which flags individuals as potential noncitizens. But election officials in multiple states have criticized the system for misidentifying U.S. citizens as possibly ineligible, raising serious concerns about accuracy and the potential for eligible voters to be wrongly removed from rolls.
While the executive order stops short of explicitly mandating a national voter registration database, it functions as precisely that. By requiring Homeland Security to create a federal citizenship list and share it with every state, the White House is constructing infrastructure for centralized federal oversight of who can vote. The order does include a provision allowing individuals to access their own records and make corrections before elections, though civil liberties groups are likely to question whether that safeguard is sufficient.
The move is conspicuously timed. Midterm elections fall this November, and voting rights organizations have already flagged concerns that restrictive policies could suppress turnout among communities of color, young voters, and low-income Americans who rely heavily on mail ballots for access to the ballot box.
The order also reinforces a narrative that Trump and his allies have long pushed: that noncitizen voting is a widespread threat to American elections. Researchers have consistently found that noncitizen voting is extremely rare. No credible study has documented it occurring at a scale that could influence election outcomes.
Adding to the legal tension, the U.S. Department of Justice stated as recently as last week that it was not pursuing the creation of a national voter registration list. The executive order now places DOJ’s public posture in direct conflict with White House policy.
Trump has separately pushed Congress to pass the SAVE America Act, legislation that would require voters to present documents like a passport or birth certificate to register to vote in federal elections. That bill has not yet passed, and the executive order appears designed to achieve similar goals through administrative action rather than legislation.
For students at Dartmouth and across the country, the order carries practical implications. College students who vote absentee or rely on mail ballots, often because they attend school far from their home states, could face new bureaucratic requirements. Any federal rule imposing barcode mandates or tightening mail ballot processing timelines adds friction to a system that already presents logistical challenges for young voters.
The executive order will almost certainly face immediate legal challenges from Democratic-led states and voting rights organizations. What plays out in the courts over the coming months will determine whether this order reshapes how millions of Americans vote this fall.
