Democrats filed suit Wednesday to stop President Donald Trump’s latest executive order that restricts who can vote by mail, arguing the order conflicts with the U.S. Constitution’s allocation of election authority. The plaintiffs argue that decisions about mail-ballot eligibility belong to states and Congress rather than to the president.
The lawsuit is the second round of legal battles over how far Trump can go in directing election procedures. Democrats and their allies say they prevailed in an earlier fight last year, when federal judges blocked Trump’s initial executive order after finding it was likely unconstitutional.
In the new effort, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, the Democratic National Committee and other Democratic party organizations tied to federal and state campaigns named Trump and top administration officials as defendants. Schumer said, “We will see him in court and we will beat him again,” in a statement.
Trump on Tuesday announced that his administration would compile lists of who is eligible to vote in each state and that the U.S. Postal Service would only mail ballots to those who meet the criteria. Critics said there may be little time to review voter rolls before ballots begin going out for fall elections, with ballots going out in some places as soon as September, and they questioned whether the administration’s lists would be reliable.
The lawsuit also argues that the administration’s approach targets mail voting itself. The complaint says Trump has sought to rewrite election rules for what it describes as partisan advantage, and it says the Constitution’s framers anticipated “this kind of desire for absolute power,” dispersing election control across states and Congress.
The filing points to changes in mail voting popularity and what it characterizes as Trump’s focus on the method rather than the rules. Mail voting has existed for more than a century and had steadily grown in both Democratic and Republican states until 2020, the lawsuit alleges, after which Trump pursued steps aimed at restricting it.
The complaint also links the administration’s mail-ballot restrictions to Trump’s longstanding claims of mass fraud around the 2020 election. The AP account says repeated investigations, including ones conducted by Republicans, found no significant fraud in the 2020 vote.
Trump has also signaled efforts to intervene in state-run elections, the lawsuit said, arguing that the president has cited often-disproved allegations of fraud. The AP account says Trump has called for the administration to “take over” voting in Democratic areas, launched a probe of the 2020 election driven by election-conspiracy theories, and pressed Congress for a law that would create new hurdles for voter registration, including an in-person, documentary proof of citizenship requirement.
In addition, Trump has personal experience with mail voting, the AP account says, including voting by mail in a Florida special election last month. The lawsuit seeks to halt the executive order as fall elections approach.