Trump Cracks Down on Mail-In Voting In New Executive Order

President Donald Trump cracked down on mail-in voting with a new executive order signed on Tuesday evening.

During the signing after 5 p.m. ET, White House Staff Secretary Will Scharf said the order is designed to “help secure elections in the future” and “ensure that the many abuses of our election system in the past aren’t repeated in future elections.”

“What this executive order is going to do is, one, we are going to take federal data, we are going to ensure each state’s election officials are provided with a comprehensive view of who the eligible voters in their jurisdiction actually are, allowing them to properly verify whether everyone voting in their elections is legally able, and then it orders the U.S. Postmaster General to take bold new measures to verify the ballots being sent to people who are eligible to vote and that the ballots that are being returned are being properly returned by eligible voters only,” Scharf said.

In an X post, Reagan Reese, the White House Correspondent for The Daily Caller, reported Trump would sign this new executive order at 5 p.m. ET on Tuesday.

“The executive order will require the admin to create a list of confirmed U.S. citizens who are eligible to vote in each state,” Reese wrote in her post. “It will also mandate that absentee ballots only be sent to those on each state’s approved mail-in ballot list. Ballots will now have specific secure envelopes, with unique barcodes for tracking. States who disobey the order may lose federal funds under the presidential action.”

Just last week, Trump bragged that “he won the presidency with mail-in ballots” but insisted he still hates them.

He made the comment while delivering remarks at an annual fundraising dinner for Republican members of Congress.

“I won with mail-in ballots, but I hate mail-in ballots because basically, it’s a way of cheating,” he said. “Jimmy Carter, the single best thing he did, including his presidency — no, it wasn’t giving away at the Panama Canal for one dollar. That was not the best. But he did that. He did a lot of other things. But he did do one thing: He had a commission with Scoop Jackson and some other very respected people, and the conclusion was never allow mail-in ballots because if you do, there will be massive cheating.”

He declared that action must be taken against mail-in voting: “We can’t do it. So, we have to do something about that.”

Many legal scholars believe the president does not have the power to dictate how states run their elections. As such, the new executive order is certain to face a court challenge.

This month, Trump also reportedly voted by mail-in ballot ahead of a special election in Palm Beach, Florida, according to multiple news outlets. The report came out one day after the president railed against the practice he called “mail-in-cheating.”

Watch above via C-Span.

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