Democratic Party leaders filed suit Wednesday to block President Donald Trump’s attempt to limit voting by mail ahead of the midterm elections.
Democrats argue that an executive order Trump signed at the White House on Tuesday, which creates an approved list of absentee voters among other actions, is an unconstitutional interference in the power of states to regulate elections.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries joined the Democratic National Committee, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and the Democratic Governors Association in suing to challenge the order.
“President Trump possesses no such authority to order such a sweeping change to American elections,” the suit argues.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for a comment on the lawsuit, but Trump dismissed the possibility of legal challenges to his order at the signing ceremony for the order.
“I don’t know how it can be challenged. … You may find a rogue judge,” he told reporters in the Oval Office. “You get a lot of rogue judges, very bad, bad people, very bad judges. But that’s the only way that can be changed, and hopefully we’ll win an appeal.”
Trump’s executive order also threatens to withhold federal funds from states that don’t comply and directs the attorney general to investigate anyone who wrongfully distributes mail-in ballots.
It’s the latest escalation in Trump’s longstanding complaints about the way Americans vote as he pushes Congress to pass the GOP-backed SAVE America Act, which has cleared the House but faces an uphill battle in the Senate. He has falsely claimed on several occasions that voting by mail is uniquely vulnerable to voter fraud, despite the fact that he cast his own ballot by that method last week in a Florida election.
Republican states have pushed ahead with their own plans to add citizenship requirements to voting laws, but the measures have also drawn swift legal challenges.
Democrats argued the executive order violates the First, Fourth, Fifth and Tenth Amendments and “dramatically exceeds his highly limited constitutional and statutory authority when it comes to regulating elections.” The lawsuit also argues that the Postal Service is being asked to go beyond its domain in building a list of eligible absentee voters.
Democratic attorneys general have been bracing for the possibility of the Trump administration interfering in this fall’s midterm elections, huddling in hotel conference rooms and over Zoom calls to war-game strategies to push back.
