Walter Olson
Walter Olson

Number eight in our series of occasional roundups on election law and policy:

I had a few things to say last week about President Donald Trump’s executive order purporting to overhaul election law by decree, something an American president doesn’t have the power to do. Our friend Stephen Richer supports some substantive elements of the scheme, including a firm Election Day cutoff on ballot receipt, but gives the order a failing grade on governance: “The president pretends as if we don’t have a Congress, and he rides roughshod over the states.” Trump’s demand that states turn voter files over to his agencies replays a similar data demand in his first administration with which 44 states refused to comply. [Rick Hasen] The funding cudgel won’t be very menacing if limited to election funding since the federal government doesn’t dispense much of that to the states [VoteBeat] Expect to see backflips on federalism as some Democrats who promoted H.R. 1’s trampling of state election authority now find merit in state autonomy after all, even as some Republicans accomplish the reverse [Dan Balz, Washington Post]
For those who want to get into the finer details, I recommend this resource from the Institute for Responsive Government, which discusses transformation of the independent, bipartisan Election Assistance Commission into an instrument of the president’s will, big new unfunded mandates for some states, hassles on proof of citizenship for military/​overseas voters, loss of jobs by noncitizens who’ve long worked uneventfully at election vendors, and hyped-up fraud claims once DOGE and DHS publicize data entry errors or simple misunderstandings of the voter file. Also: “Why Trump wants to ban barcodes on ballots, and what it means for voters and election officials.” [VoteBeat]
Having pulled a similar stunt in Pennsylvania last year, which I wrote about at the time,  » Read More
https://www.cato.org/blog/election-policy-roundup-6