‍Atlanta – Today, President Trump signed an executive order that reads like a MAGA fever dream and would likely crumble in court. The order takes aim at voting access through a wide-ranging list of attacks, including a requirement for government-issued, documentary proof of citizenship to use the federal voter registration form, even though only U.S. citizens vote in federal elections and are required to swear on the federal voter registration form that they are U.S. citizens under penalty of perjury.

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The order gives more power to Elon Musk’s DOGE to comb through state voter files — a recipe for unprecedented voter purges, human and database errors, and the disenfranchisement of potentially thousands or millions of eligible American voters. This comes as Trump and his allies in Congress are pushing a massive voter suppression scheme that could block more than 21 million eligible Americans from voting. Fair Fight CEO Lauren Groh-Wargo responded with the following statement:

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“Donald Trump doesn’t want fair elections. He wants control — this executive order is just the latest scheme to rig elections and stop the American people from holding him accountable.

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“He’s recycling a scheme the courts already blocked and handing it to Elon Musk, whose roots are in apartheid South Africa and its racist belief system, to decide who’s American enough to vote. You can’t make this up.”

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“They’re empowering DOGE to purge voter rolls and flood the system with errors so they can scream about chaos later. Trump wants to use the chaos to silence us so he has more power to hold down our wages, raise prices on our healthcare, take our social security, and line the pockets of his donors.

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“Just like the massive voter suppression law moving through Congress, this is about locking the doors to democracy and handing the keys to oligarchs and super rich campaign donors. We’ve faced down power-hungry politicians before — and every time, we come back tougher, louder, and more relentless.”

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What’s in the MAGA Fever Dream Executive Order: Trump’s executive order takes aim at voting access through a wide-ranging list of attacks, but a few standouts show just how far he’s willing to go:

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• Requires government-issued documentary proof of U.S. citizenship for federal voter registration — something already struck down by multiple courts.
• Targets states that count mail ballots received after Election Day and threatens to cut off election funding unless they comply.
• Calls for Elon Musk’s DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency) to cross-reference voter files against immigration databases and force information-sharing — a setup for massive, error-prone voter purges.
• Revokes Biden’s 2021 executive order which promoted voter participation through federal agencies, even though the previous order was already carried out.

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The provision targeting states that count mail ballots received after Election Day could also disenfranchise U.S. military personnel and American citizens living overseas — communities that often rely on postmarked-by-Election-Day deadlines to have their votes counted. That’s not speculation: the Department of Justice has already warned that eliminating  grace periods for ballot receipt could violate the Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act. Trump’s order mimics a legal strategy currently being pushed by far-right activists in the courts, aiming to ban states like Mississippi from counting valid ballots received after Election Day.

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How Similar Policy Changes Were Defeated in Court Before: A nearly identical attempt to require documentary proof of citizenship for federal voter registration was blocked in court during Trump’s first term. In League of Women Voters v. Newby, federal judges ruled that states cannot impose extra documentation requirements. Courts found the move violated both the National Voter Registration Act and the Administrative Procedure Act, calling it an unlawful barrier to voting. The U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear appeals, effectively affirming that proof-of-citizenship mandates on the federal form are illegal and unenforceable.

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