President Donald Trump's executive order seeking broad changes to how elections are run in the U.S. is vast in scope and holds the potential to reorder the voting landscape across the country, even as it faces almost certain litigation.
He wants to require voters to show proof that they are U.S. citizens before they can register for federal elections, count only mail or absentee ballots received by Election Day, set new rules for voting equipment and prohibit non-U.S. citizens from being able to donate in certain elections.
A man places his ballot in a box during early voting in Waukesha, Wis Tuesday, March 18, 2025. (AP Photo/Jeffrey Phelps)
A basic question underlying the sweeping actions he signed Tuesday: Can he do it, given that the Constitution gives wide leeway to the states to develop their own election procedures? Here are some of the main points of the executive order and questions it raises.
Voters would need to provide citizenship documents to register
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Trump's order calls for the federal voter registration form to be amended so prospective voters must provide documentary proof of citizenship, such as a U.S. passport or a birth certificate.
It also says states should turn over their voter lists and records of voter list maintenance to the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Government Efficiency for review, and directs federal agencies to share data with states to help them identify noncitizens on their rolls.
If states refuse to collaborate with federal law enforcement to prosecute election crimes, they could potentially lose out on federal grants, the order says.
Noncitizen voting, which is already a felony in federal elections that can lead to prison time and deportation, is exceedingly rare. Still, Trump falsely claimed in 2024 that it might happen in large enough numbers to sway the outcome of the presidential race, and it has been a top conservative priority in recent months.
Republicans have been trying to get a documentary proof of citizenship requirement through Congress, a goal this order seeks to accomplish. Voting rights groups have expressed concern about such a requirement, saying it could disenfranchise the millions of Americans who do not have proof of citizenship readily available.
Mail ballots would need to be received by Election Day
The order requires votes to be "cast and received" by Election Day and says federal funding should be conditional on state compliance with that deadline. Currently, 18 states and Puerto Rico accept mailed ballots received after Election Day as long they are postmarked on or before that date, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.
Perhaps no state is more notorious for drawn-out vote counts than California, the nation's most populous. It allows ballots to be counted if they are received up to seven days following the election as long as they are postmarked by Election Day.
Most California voters cast ballots they receive in the mail, and in the pursuit of accuracy, thoroughness and counting every vote, the state has gained a reputation for tallies that can drag on for weeks or even a month or more. In one Northern California U.S. House primary last year, a recount settled the outcome nearly two months after the election. At the time, Secretary of State Shirley Weber, who oversees elections, said in a statement: "I understand that people want finality, but accuracy is of utmost importance."
But the extended tallies have raised fears that they could undercut, rather than bolster, voter confidence. In 2018, then-Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan described California's election system as "bizarre" in a year when Democrats picked off a string of GOP-held House seats.
In a statement, California Democratic Sen. Alex Padilla said Trump's order "does nothing to improve the safety of our federal elections — what it would do is disenfranchise millions of eligible American voters."
Padilla, who formerly served as California's chief elections officer, said Trump "lacks the authority to implement many of the changes laid out in this illegal executive order."
Voters cast their ballots during a special election for a vacant Minnesota House seat in District 40B at St. Christopher's Episcopal Church in Roseville, Minn. on Tuesday, March 11, 2025. (John Autey/Pioneer Press via AP)
Ballots could not rely on QR codes to be counted
The executive order instructs the Election Assistance Commission to amend its guidelines for voting systems to protect election integrity. That would include guidance that voting systems should not rely on ballots that use barcodes or QR codes in the vote-counting process.
Trump instructed the commission to "take appropriate action to review and, if appropriate, re-certify voting systems" under those new standards within six months of the order.
In Georgia, an important presidential battleground, virtually all in-person voters use voting machines with a large touchscreen to record their votes. The machines then print a paper ballot with a human-readable summary of the voter's selections and a QR code, a type of barcode that is read by a scanner to count the votes.
It is not entirely clear how the executive order would affect Georgia and other jurisdictions throughout the country that use these machines.
Representatives for Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger did not immediately respond Tuesday evening to messages seeking comment. The Georgia Legislature last year passed a law requiring that QR codes be removed from ballots by July 2026.
Foreign nationals would be barred from making donations
The order cracks down on foreign nationals contributing or donating in U.S. elections. It's an issue that's been bubbling in recent years in the states, as Republicans seek to dampen the influence of Swiss billionaire Hansjörg Wyss.
Wyss, who lives in Wyoming, has donated hundreds of millions of dollars to 501(c) nonprofit organizations that support liberal causes. One of those groups, the Sixteen Thirty Fund, donated a combined $3.9 million to enshrine abortion protections in the Ohio Constitution. It also helped thwart a proposed constitutional amendment advanced by Ohio Republicans the previous summer that would have made passing future constitutional amendments harder.
During the run-up to last year's presidential election, legislative Republicans linked then-President Joe Biden's appearance on Ohio's fall ballot to passing a ban on contributions from foreign individuals, companies, governments or political parties to campaigns for or against proposed amendments to the state constitution.
Other states have followed suit, most recently Kansas — which passed a nearly identical bill earlier this month after hearing testimony from Ohio's secretary of state. Like the Ohio bill, it appears partly a response to a successful campaign to protect abortion rights in Kansas, which received money from the Sixteen Thirty Fund. Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly has not said publicly whether she'll sign it.
Can Trump do all this through executive order?
President Donald Trump delivers remarks in the Roosevelt Room at the White House in Washington, Monday, March 24, 2025. (Pool via AP)
The federal government plays a fairly limited role in American elections. Article I, Section 4 of the Constitution gives states the authority to determine the "times, places and manner" of how elections are run. The so-called "Elections Clause" doesn't get into the specifics of voting or ballot-counting procedures – those details are left to the states – but it does give Congress the power to "make or alter" election regulations, at least for federal office.
It does not mention any role for the president or the executive branch in regulating elections. Biden issued an executive order in 2021 directing federal agencies to take steps to promote voting access, but Republicans at the time argued that the order was unconstitutional and exceeded the president's authority. Trump rescinded the Biden order earlier this year.
Voting rights advocates have begun to make similar arguments against Trump's order.
"A president does not set election law and never will," said Virginia Kase Solomón, president and CEO of Common Cause, a grassroots advocacy organization that supports expanded voter access.
Sophia Lin Lakin, the director of the ACLU's Voting Rights Project, called core parts of the executive order "a blatant overreach that threatens to disenfranchise tens of millions of eligible voters."
Given the nation's long history of decentralized, state-run elections, any attempt to change state election laws by executive order is likely to face challenges in court. Marc Elias, a leading Democratic election and voting rights attorney, promised exactly that.
"Moments ago, Donald Trump signed a massive voter suppression executive order," he said in a social media post. "This will not stand. We will sue."
Ultimately, the courts will decide how far Trump can go in overhauling election procedures.
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Associated Press writers Michael R. Blood in Los Angeles, Kate Brumback in Atlanta, Julie Carr Smyth in Columbus, Ohio, Ali Swenson in New York and Robert Yoon in Washington contributed to this report.
More than a million people took advantage of expanded early in-person voting in this state. Here's what we know about them.
More than a million people took advantage of expanded early in-person voting in this state. Here's what we know about them.
Older voters were the most likely to take advantage of Michigan's expanded early in-person voting option in the November general election, reports.
Nearly one in three early voters was age 60 or older, according to the Michigan Department of State, and more than half of early voters were at least 51 years old. That well outpaces the percentage of Michigan residents who are in that age group—Census data shows about 37.8% of Michiganians are in that age range.
Early Voting Among Michiganders of All Ages
But the state's early voting options proved popular across other age groups as well. Nearly 60% of Michigan's November voters cast ballots before the sun even rose on Election Day, state data show, a sign the state's residents are embracing expanded access to different ways to vote.
This was the first general election where voters across Michigan had the opportunity to vote in person at designated polling places for at least nine days before election day, following the implementation of 2022's Proposal 2.
Jeanne Welch, now 70, voted early at Midland's Dow Memorial Library in October. Warm weather made it easier to wait in a line that—despite moving quickly—stretched out the door. She told Votebeat that she thought voting early in person was the best way to do it.
"I wanted to get it done early, to get my vote in for my candidate," she told Votebeat as she waited in line to check in. "I don't need to be stuck in the November rush, when it might be snowing."
Many younger voters also tried it out: Voters ages 18 to 30 made up more than 17.3% of all early in-person voters. The same age group makes up about 12.9% of Michigan's population, according to 2023 Census data, a sign the choice was popular among younger voters.
One of those was Josh Burr, who is a senior in college in Grand Rapids but wanted to vote in Midland, where he lives. He went with his entire family to vote early in October at the library.
He said the opportunity was worth the relatively short wait, maybe 20 minutes.
"I wanted to get it done while I was home," he said. "This was easy to do, so I'm here."
In all, more than cast a ballot early and in person in the 2024 general election, out of more than 5.7 million total ballots cast, or more than 20% of voters.
Expanded access to early voting under Proposal 2 meant that voters could cast their ballot in person on the weekend no matter where they lived. But the law doesn't specify what time of day voting has to be available, so many clerks just ran early voting alongside their standard business hours. Not surprisingly, the early option was most used by people with more flexible schedules, including retirees and younger people who might have time off in the middle of the standard work week.
More women voted early than men: Women made up 52% of the Michiganders who cast ballots that way in November. They also dominated absentee voting, accounting for nearly 57% of absentee voters in the general election.
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Early Voting Boosts Turnout in Midland County
Midland was one of the counties that had a single countywide polling place for early voters. That might have suited people who live in the city of Midland, which is near the eastern edge of the roughly 500-square-mile county. But it was more difficult for time-strapped voters who live farther away in Coleman or Jasper Township.
Expanded early voting was a lot of work for clerks around the state, who have compared it to having . Some, like Midland, went so far as to hire an early voting coordinator.
But Midland County Deputy Clerk John Keefer said the expansion of early voting likely helped boost turnout. Across the state, more people voted than ever before. In Midland County, he saw early voting numbers rise from maybe 900 voters across nine days in the February presidential primary to more than 2,000 in the first two days of the general election.
Part of that is certainly the fact that more people vote in general elections. But it also comes down to access and understanding, Keefer said. "We really work on getting the word out about the early vote center," he said.
"We can't take all the credit for it, because one party did a complete 180 and embraced early voting and the absentee ballot process," Keefer said, in an apparent reference to the shift in Republican messaging about expanded voting options, "but … the awareness, it really helps."
He originally expected to see voters split evenly between the three methods: absentee, early in-person, and Election Day in-person. In past Midland County elections, about 60% of voters typically chose to vote in person, while 40% voted absentee.
The split in November wasn't quite even thirds, he said, but it moved closer.
"I think in the future, (early voting) is going to become more the norm as more people learn about it," he said. "The midterms are going to be a bellwether."
Fewer people usually turn out in off-year and gubernatorial election years, but depending how the numbers look, Midland County could move its early voting operations to a bigger space in 2028.
What most surprised Keefer was the number of first-time voters he helped or met at the county's early vote center.
"What was interesting is a number of them weren't young," he said. "When you hear first-time voters, you might automatically assume they were teenagers. But no, these were people who saw the line, had the time, and decided to get it done," he said. "We would have conversations where I said a line might not be good from their perspective, but it shows that people really cared."
Absentee voting remained a popular early voting option, especially among older voters.
Voters aged 60 and up were the most likely to vote by absentee ballot in the November election. Nearly 59% of all absentee voters were 60 and older, state data show. Only about 20% of absentee voters were 40 or younger.
Older voters especially tend to favor absentee voting because it allows them to cast their ballots on their own schedule without having to leave their homes, experts say. Michigan now allows voters to be on the absentee voter list permanently, and that list now includes a number of COVID-19 pandemic-era absentee voters who grew to like the convenience of a ballot showing up automatically in their mailbox.
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