Making it Harder to Vote Isn’t Fraud Prevention: The Truth About Trump’s Executive Order
We are about to watch the Trump administration ask the Supreme Court to do something the Constitution explicitly forbids. On July 27, 2026, just days after federal courts blocked it, the administration appealed its March 31 executive order to the nation’s highest court. The order attempts to seize control of mail voting from the states and hand it to the U.S. Postal Service and Department of Homeland Security. What’s remarkable is not just how aggressive this power grab is, but that it solves a problem that does not exist.
Let’s start with what the order actually does. It directs the federal government to compile its own lists of citizens it deems eligible to vote, then instructs the Postal Service to refuse delivery of ballots to anyone not on those lists. The order claims states have sloppy voter rolls and that mail voting is rife with fraud. Both claims are false, and the courts have already said so.
Consider the practical absurdity here. The Postal Service is supposed to deliver mail, and the Department of Homeland Security protects borders. Neither agency has any expertise in election administration. Neither has the infrastructure to make judgments about voter eligibility. The DHS citizenship data is known to have problems. It generates false positives. Eligible voters would wrongly lose the right to cast ballots. This is not speculation. The Justice Department’s own lawyers acknowledged in court filings that the citizenship lists would be “underinclusive and incomplete.”
John E. Jones III, former federal judge and current president of Dickinson College, understands this better than most. Appointed to the federal bench in 2002 by President George W. Bush and confirmed unanimously by the Senate, Jones served nearly two decades as a judge before leaving the bench in 2021. He has seen these arguments before.
Back in 2020, a conservative legal foundation sued Pennsylvania’s election officials, claiming that 21,206 dead people remained on voter rolls. The group wanted the court to purge them immediately, before the election. Jones denied the request. As he wrote, “in an election where every vote matters, we will not disenfranchise potentially eligible voters based solely upon the allegations of a private foundation.” No evidence emerged that any deceased person actually voted. Yet after the election, at a now infamous press conference, former Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani waved Jones’s decision in the air and falsely claimed it as proof that dead people had voted Pennsylvania. It was a lie built on a foundation of innuendo.
The fraud narrative behind the current executive order rests on the same flimsy ground. According to the Brookings Institution, researchers found an average fraud rate of 0.000043 percent of all mail ballots cast across the 2016, 2018, 2020, and 2022 general elections. That is roughly four cases for every ten million ballots mailed. The Associated Press conducted a survey of state and election officials in both Democratic and Republican run states and found no cases of fraud, vandalism, or theft related to mail ballot drop boxes in 2020 that could have changed any outcome. Yet the administration continues to assert, without evidence, that mail voting is a vector for fraud.
Why does this matter to us? Because the executive order, if upheld, would make it vastly harder for millions of eligible Americans to vote by mail. Military members serving overseas. The elderly. The recently relocated. People with disabilities. These are the voters most likely to use mail voting. These are also the voters the executive order would systematically exclude.
There is a deeper constitutional principle at stake. The framers of the Constitution gave election authority to the states deliberately. They knew that concentrating power over elections in one office or agency creates the possibility for abuse. Federalism was the safeguard.
The Supreme Court could have dismissed this case. The lower courts already blocked it twice. But the administration is asking the court to move fast, arguing the policy must be in place by mid-August for the November midterms. We should be skeptical of that urgency. The Supreme Court has wisely stayed clear of election emergencies before. It may do so again.
What we cannot do is accept the false premise. This executive order is not about cleaning up voter rolls or preventing fraud. It is about making it harder for certain Americans to vote. The Constitution says no to that. The courts have said no. We should demand the same. Go beyond the headlines…
2 in 3 worry political leaders will pressure officials to change election outcomes: Gallup
Spain, Morocco try to halt deadly rush on Spanish enclave after tens of thousands cross in a day
AI’s real threat to jobs could be lower pay
Digital habits that rob attention and energy — and how to combat them
Math shows why your vote may not count the way you think it does
Martha Stewart’s New App Makes Homeownership Less Stressful—Here’s What It Can Do
Inside the massive cheating scandal shaking UNAM, Mexico’s top university
Argentina’s Milei seeks to deport foreigners that spread ‘hate’ of country
