Election experts say confusion, rather than actual changes to law, could be the main hindrance to voter participation in November.
Read more Court halts Ohio proof-of-citizenship requirement at motor vehicle offices
For much of his second term, President Donald Trump has been trying to dramatically change how people vote. He’s pushed to limit (or ban) mail voting, create strict voter ID laws, require verification of citizenship, and even once said that Republicans should “take over the voting” and nationalize it.
His attempts to make sweeping changes to election law have been mostly unsuccessful so far, but they have created a lot of uncertainty about how elections will be run — including this fall. In some states, ballots for November’s election will get mailed next week.
Election experts worry some confused voters will opt out of participating altogether.
“Trump’s efforts to change the voting rules have been blocked at every point,” said Wendy Weiser, with the Brennan Center for Justice, a nonpartisan think tank that focuses on democracy issues. “But he has succeeded in sowing confusion among voters.”
Here’s what’s going on.
But so far, he hasn’t been able to. He issued an executive order in March trying to prevent voters who aren’t marked as citizens from receiving mailed ballots.
The fate of the policy is in the hands of the courts, which have yet to issue any final ruling on it.
On Monday, a divided Supreme Court essentially said the Trump administration could make the preparations necessary to institute the policy in this fall’s elections but did not make a final decision on whether the change ultimately will be allowed. The justices sent the case back down to lower courts, which have been skeptical of Trump’s ability to make these changes. Presidents typically don’t have control over how elections are run; the Constitution grants that authority to states and Congress.
“As of right now, nothing has changed with regard to voting by mail and absentee,” said Tammy Patrick, a former election official in Arizona now with the nonpartisan Election Center. “That could change. It’s important for voters to keep an eye on what’s happening and make a plan on how they want to vote, where they want to vote and try to vote early.”
For years, Trump railed against mail-in voting, saying he lost the 2020 election because of it. “Mail-in voting means mail-in cheating,” he declared this year without evidence.
His focus on this has perplexed even some conservatives, especially those in rural areas who say mail-in voting is popular and safe.
“Over 70 percent of Montanans vote mail-in, and it goes up every election,” Sen. Steve Daines (R-Montana) told reporters this year. Trump has voted by mail, and almost all states offer some form of mail balloting.
Read more Wisconsin prosecutor declines to charge Musk in election bribery investigation
Trump’s focus on banning mail-in voting has had an impact: A number of conservative states have passed strict voting laws targeting it in recent years. But he’s struggled to make any federal changes.
A lot of Trump’s ideas on voting have been rolled into legislation called the Save America Act.
The bill would dramatically change how people cast ballots by requiring proof of citizenship to register to vote, photo IDs to vote and for most people voting by mail to provide proof of citizenship.
A version of this bill passed the House but has been stalled in the Republican-controlled Senate.
“The Save America Act is light-years away from becoming law,” said David Becker, a former Justice Department voting rights attorney and head of the nonpartisan Center for Election Innovation and Research.
Trump has pointed to the fact that New Jersey recently said hundreds of noncitizens voted in 2023 and 2024 — because of a software error listing them as voters — as one reason sweeping changes are needed. Election experts say this batch of noncitizens voting, while relatively large, is rare.
Courts have struck down Trump’s efforts to require proof of citizenship to register to vote.
His Justice Department has tried and failed to get many states to hand over sensitive voter data; they’ve lost every single court case brought by states that have challenged these demands.
And the Supreme Court recently upheld a law in Mississippi that allows mailed ballots postmarked by Election Day to count even if they arrive days later.
“States are moving forward the preparing for the midterm election,” Becker said, “regardless of what the feds do. That said, the administration appears to be hell-bent on creating a sense of chaos and confusion around the election. This puts a tremendous pressure on voters, and especially on election officials.”
Amber Phillips writes The 5-Minute Fix newsletter, a quick analysis of the day’s biggest political news. Send her an email here, or ask a question that could be featured in an upcoming newsletter.
