On March 31, Trump issued an executive order “that seeks to create lists of U.S. citizens who are eligible to vote in each state” and instructs “the U.S. Postal Service to send mail ballots only to verified voters.” As NPR further reported, the executive order “instructs the Department of Homeland Security, working in conjunction with the Social Security Administration, to ‘compile and transmit to the chief election official of each State a list of individuals confirmed to be United States citizens who will be above the age of 18 at the time of an upcoming Federal election and who maintain a residence in the subject State,’” and “then ‘requires the USPS to transmit ballots only to individuals enrolled on a State-specific Mail-in and Absentee Participation List, ensuring that only eligible absentee or mail-in voters receive absentee or mail-in ballots,’ according to a White House fact sheet.” [NPR, 3/31/26]

Election law experts wrote that the executive order is “likely unconstitutional” and cannot be implemented by the 2026 midterm elections. NPR noted that “Rick Hasen, an election law expert at UCLA, wrote on his blog that the order is likely unconstitutional” and that he noted that “the timing here makes this virtually impossible to implement in time for November’s elections.” In a piece at Slate, Hasen wrote that “the order is so underwhelming that it suggests Trump’s real purpose was not its implementation but to create more confusion and litigation around elections, further undermining voter confidence in the integrity of American elections” and putting “into question the rules of an election that is just months away, giving voters reason to fear that the Postal Service could sabotage their ballots.” Another expert told Democracy Docket that the order was “convoluted” and “you can’t make [the Postal Service] the gatekeepers for ballot delivery.” And the director of the Brennan Center’s Voting Rights and Elections Program told The New York Times that “the president doesn’t have any authority to write the rules that govern our elections. The Constitution gives that power to Congress and to the states, not to the president.” [NPR, 3/31/26; Slate, 4/1/26; Democracy Docket, 4/1/26; The New York Times, 3/31/26]

A previous executive order on elections that Trump issued in 2025 has been blocked by the courts. Multiple federal judges have blocked aspects of the order, which “calls for the Election Assistance Commission to require people to show government-issued proof of U.S. citizenship to register to vote in federal elections,” “directs state or local officials to record and verify the information,” and “seeks to require states to count ballots by Election Day.” [Media Matters 10/28/25; The New York Times, 3/25/25, 6/13/25; The Associated Press, 1/30/26]

Some Trump allies have proposed Trump issue an executive order declaring a “national emergency” to prevent supposed election fraud. An advocate for the proposal, which has reportedly circulated within the Trump administration, said that it “would empower the president to ban mail ballots and voting machines as the vectors of foreign interference.” Trump allies reportedly spearheading the proposed order include attorney Peter Ticktin, a QAnon figure known as Juan O. Savin, and right-wing author Jerome Corsi. [Media Matters, 10/28/25, 2/26/26]

Podcaster Jovan Pulitzer, whom the Arizona Mirror described as “a favorite of election fraud conspiracy theorists,” called the executive order a “major win” and said that “we’ve got to take the wins as we can get the wins.” Pulitzer called aspects of the order to supposedly force states to make sure their lists of voters are accurate “genius,” and he called the order “the clearest path for getting a thing done.” He described the effort as a “monumental movement” that is “going to create all kinds of hell.” [Arizona Mirror, 4/30/21; Rumble, 4/1/26, 4/1/26]

True the Vote’s Catherine Engelbrecht: While the executive order is “a slippery slope,” “it’s still worth doing. Somebody’s got to do something. And God bless President Trump for at least, you know, doing what he can.” Engelbrecht — who founded True the Vote, which aims to “restore America’s confidence in our electoral process” and was behind the claims of the election misinformation film 2000 Mules — went on to praise Trump “for at least stepping to the plate, putting it in writing, and forcing them to respond.” Additionally, True the Vote posted on Truth Social that the executive order means that “the era of trust-but-don’t-verify is over.” [Media Matters, 9/15/22, 12/4/24; Texas Monthly, 8/22/22; True the Vote, True the Vote Now, 4/1/26; Truth Social, 3/31/26]

A QAnon influencer who goes by Juan O. Savin, and who previously recruited election denial candidates for positions where they would be in charge of election administration, said Trump was “really just kind of forcing all the various agencies to do their job” with the executive order. Savin said that “anybody thinks that this is doing something truly unique and new is probably wrong,” and he claimed Trump “has total authority to direct the actions to the post office” because “there’s no intrusion upon states’ rights.” Savin had previously said his team “wrote up” a different executive order regarding voting that has reportedly circulated within the Trump administration and would declare a national election emergency to crack down on supposed fraud. In a separate interview, Savin acknowledged that Trump’s latest executive order on elections was “not the complete executive order that my team put together in the 17-page executive order” and said the administration “may very well break that up into several pieces.” [The Daily Beast, 11/2/22; Media Matters, 10/28/25, 1/26/23; Lawfare, 3/20/26; Rumble, Nino’s Corner, 4/1/26; Rumble, The B2T Show, 3/31/26]

Seth Keshel claimed the executive order was Trump “striking while the iron is hot and counting on the morons wearing out their welcome with the cheating.” Keshel is a former U.S. Army intelligence captain and blogger who “has become a darling among election deniers by factoring widespread voter fraud — the existence of which has been widely debunked — into his election predictions,” according to The New York Times. He posted on Telegram that “some communist court will strike down his mail-in voting order, which will then be expedited to SCOTUS,” which “is sick of mail-in ballot games and all 6 Republican-appointed justices appear to be ready to squash the concept of late-arriving mail-in ballots.” [The New York Times, 10/15/24; Substack, accessed 2/5/26; Telegram, 4/1/26]

David Clements said the executive order was potentially “great” and “wonderful” and means “the democrats are toast.” Lawfare reported in 2024 that Clements had “criss-crossed the country to evangelize about purported election fraud,” and The Washington Post reported in 2022 that he was “traveling the country trying to persuade local leaders to withhold certification of election results.” In April 1 social media posts, he suggested that the order was not “violating state’s rights” because it “does not create new substantive rules from scratch; it directs federal agencies to implement and enhance existing federal statutory requirements." He also said the order means that “democrats are toast” and the “toys” from “the swamp” — i.e., existing federal election rules, which he claimed “the swamp used … to inflate numbers and commit massive fraud” — now “are being used against them.” On a podcast, Clements said he “got a bunch of texts from other election integrity folks” about the order, and “most of them were bummed” because it did not focus on the “big stuff,” but he said he thinks the order is “brilliant” and could potentially be “a great executive order. It's wonderful.” [Lawfare, 10/31/24; The Washington Post, 9/8/22; Telegram, 4/1/26, 4/1/26; Rumble, Absolute Storm, 4/2/26]

Kris Jurski, “a Florida activist who has promoted election conspiracy theories,” wrote on his Substack that the executive order “proves the message is finally getting through: the voter rolls are the strategic foundation of every election.” Added Jurski, “If the list is corrupt, the outcome can be corrupt — regardless of how the votes are counted.” [NBC News, 3/18/26; Substack, 4/5/26]

On Newsmax, Kari Lake called the executive order possibly “the most important executive order [Trump’s] ever signed.” Lake, a Trump administration official with the U.S. Agency for Global Media and former Arizona GOP candidate who focused intensely on election fraud claims during her campaigns, said on Newsmax that “the people of this country need some relief from the corrupt people running our elections.” [The Guardian, 7/31/24; Media Matters, 6/14/23; Newsmax, Rob Schmitt Tonight, 3/31/26]