What Happened
Reuters reported that President Donald Trump’s executive order tightening rules on mail-in voting faced its first major court test Thursday in Washington.
U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols heard two hours of arguments from Democratic Party lawyers seeking to block the March 31 order. He did not rule from the bench, but said he would issue a written decision later and was “aware of time pressure here.”
Reuters says the order directs the administration to compile a list of confirmed U.S. citizens eligible to vote in each state, use federal data to help state officials verify eligibility, require the Postal Service to deliver ballots only to voters on each state’s approved mail-in ballot list, and make states preserve election-related records for five years.
Why This Matters
Elections are not supposed to be a federal escape room built out of one man’s grudge about 2020. States run elections. Congress writes election law. The president does not usually get to pick up the remote and start changing the settings because mail ballots give him indigestion.
Reuters noted that Trump has spent years pushing the false claim that widespread voter fraud caused his 2020 loss. The case lands months before midterms where control of Congress is on the line.
The Dumb Part With The Voter Spreadsheet Cannon
The dumb part is the confidence that federal data can be welded into a clean list of eligible voters without turning into a bureaucratic wood chipper. Anyone who has ever fought with a DMV record, a maiden name, a hyphen, or a ZIP code typo can hear the theme music already.
DOJ argued the lawsuit is premature because agencies have not implemented the order yet. Democrats argued there is no statute authorizing the challenged commands. So the court is being asked to decide whether the election machine is already on fire or merely being filled with gasoline in an orderly fashion.
The Bottom Line
No ruling yet. A similar challenge from Democratic-led states is also pending in Boston.
But the premise is peak politics nonsense: after years of fake fraud claims, the White House wants a national voter-data apparatus and mail-ballot delivery rules, while everyone else gets to litigate whether the president found a secret election-control joystick in the couch cushions.
Sources
Reuters: Judge weighs Democrats’ bid to block Trump’s executive order on voting