Top congressional Democrats, party campaign arms and allied groups are suing President Donald Trump and his administration over a sweeping order he signed this week that would increase federal involvement in elections.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-NY, and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-NY, along with the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, the Democratic Governors Association and the Democratic National Committee, filed the lawsuit Thursday.
The lawsuit, filed in US District Court in Washington, DC, seeks to block Trump’s executive order signed Tuesday targeting mail-in voting and voter eligibility, as Senate Republicans continue debating the Safeguarding American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act.
“The American people are fed up with Republicans’ price-spiking, health care-gutting agenda and are ready to vote them out,” Schumer, Jeffries and the committee chairs said in a joint statement. “That’s why Donald Trump is desperately trying to rig our elections by making it harder to vote for seniors, Americans with disabilities, members of the military, rural communities and other working families who rely on vote-by-mail. This move is blatantly unconstitutional, and we will fight against it.”
“We are taking action to challenge Trump’s executive order to protect the right to vote and ensure every eligible American can make their voice heard at the ballot box,” they added.
Trump has warned Republicans that if they cannot pass the SAVE America Act — which is unlikely given unified Democratic opposition in the Senate — the GOP could face major losses in the upcoming midterm elections.
White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson fired back, “Only Democrat politicians and operatives would be upset about lawful efforts to secure American elections and ensure only eligible American citizens are casting ballots.”
“President Trump campaigned on securing our elections and the American people sent him back to the White House to get the job done,” she said.
The executive order, signed earlier this week, reflects Trump taking matters into his own hands amid the political reality in Congress.
The order would create federal “citizenship lists” of US citizens using government databases, require those lists to be shared with states before elections, and give the US Postal Service (USPS) authority over mail-in voting logistics. It would also require voters to be enrolled with USPS to receive mail ballots.
The order would allow USPS to refuse delivery of ballots from people not on its approved list and impose new federal design and processing rules for mail-in ballot envelopes.
Democrats argue the order is unconstitutional on several grounds, including that it overrides states’ authority over elections, violates the separation of powers, breaches privacy laws and risks disenfranchising millions of voters.
They argue Trump has “no such authority” to impose sweeping changes on elections nationwide.
“If permitted, the President’s actions would fundamentally alter the constitutional balance between the states and the federal government by allowing the executive branch to wield federal power to pressure states into adopting federal preferences for the conduct of elections,” they wrote in the lawsuit.
