DNC and top Democratic leaders sue Trump over mail-in voting executive order

A coalition of major Democratic groups sued the Trump administration on Wednesday, seeking to strike down an executive order that would exert more federal influence over mail-in voting — including by creating lists of U.S. citizens who are eligible to vote in each state.

The suit — filed in D.C. federal court by the Democratic National Committee, Democratic Governors Association and two major Democratic campaign groups — is the first major legal challenge to the executive order, which President Trump signed on Tuesday. The top two Democrats in Congress, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, are also listed as plaintiffs in the lawsuit. 

Mr. Trump’s order requires Secretary of Homeland Security Markwayne Mullin to put together a list of U.S. citizens who are eligible to vote in every state, using data from the Social Security Administration. It also directs the U.S. Postal Service to only send absentee ballots to people on each state’s federally approved mail-in ballot list. 

States that don’t go along with the executive order are at risk of losing federal funding, a White House official told CBS News earlier this week. It’s not clear what would happen if an eligible U.S. citizen is left off the list.

The plaintiffs in Wednesday’s lawsuit argued the order unconstitutionally intrudes on Congress and the states’ power to regulate elections, since the Constitution doesn’t give the president any direct authority over how federal elections are conducted. Their suit cast the order as part of a gambit by Mr. Trump to “rewrite election rules for his own perceived partisan advantage.”

“Our Constitution’s Framers anticipated this kind of desire for absolute power. They recognized the menace it would pose to ordered liberty and the ways in which it would corrode self-government like an acid,” the Democratic groups wrote in a 64-page complaint. “That careful division of authority has held fast against President Trump’s attacks.”

The suit called the executive order “convoluted and confusing,” and said it “dramatically restricts the ability of Americans to vote by mail, impinging on traditional state authority.” It also alleged the order “runs headlong into myriad other guarantees provided by the Constitution, the States, and Congress — authorities that do regulate elections.”

The groups are being represented by attorney Marc Elias, and are asking for the executive order to be struck down on First, Fifth and Tenth Amendment grounds. The complaint also alleges a violation of the separation of powers, plus violations of the Administrative Procedure Act, the Voting Rights Act and other federal laws.

CBS News has reached out to the White House for comment on the lawsuit.

The executive order comes as Mr. Trump has publicly pressed Congress to pass restrictions on mail-in voting, which he has alleged — without evidence — is rife with fraud. He has called on lawmakers to pass the SAVE Act, which would include proof-of-citizenship requirements aimed at preventing non-citizens from registering to vote, something that is already extremely rare.

Last year, Mr. Trump signed an executive order that sought to impose proof-of-citizenship requirements on federal mail voter registration forms. It also would have allowed the federal government to withhold congressionally directed federal funds for elections from states that did not enter into election-related information-sharing agreements. 

That order was struck down in multiple courts. One judge who ruled on it, U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, wrote in her opinion that the president does not have authority to direct changes to the federal election procedures.

“The first question presented in these consolidated cases is whether the President, acting unilaterally, may direct changes to federal election procedures,” Kollar-Kotelly wrote. “Because our Constitution assigns responsibility for election regulation to the States and to Congress, this Court holds that the President lacks the authority to direct such changes.”