The Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law decried President Trump’s executive order restricting mail-in voting.
Damon Hewitt, president and executive director, issued this statement:
“Tonight, President Trump issued yet another unlawful executive order, this time seeking to jeopardize access to the ballot and the ability to vote by mail for countless American citizens.
This executive order is designed to make it harder for people to cast a ballot and to intimidate voters, all while sowing confusion in the process. That’s not a strategy for governance. That’s anti-democracy politics of the worst kind. And by attempting to create a voter database, Trump is once again treading on the Constitution. This is a blatant effort to single out Americans to question their eligibility and silence their political voice.
The president has no authority to restrict the use of mail-in ballots. This is a clear overreach of executive power and a direct threat to the fundamental right to vote. The Constitution does not grant the president unilateral authority to dictate how Americans cast their ballots—this power rests with the states and Congress. Efforts to undermine lawful, widely used voting methods are both legally suspect and deeply harmful to our democracy.
Invoking concerns about non-citizen voting is based on a completely false narrative. There is no credible evidence of widespread voter fraud through mail-in voting or of non-citizens voting in any meaningful numbers—none. These claims have been repeatedly debunked by courts and election officials. This executive order is a calculated attempt to justify new barriers to the ballot. The president’s claims serve only to stoke fear and lay the political groundwork for unnecessary and restrictive measures that could disenfranchise eligible voters.
Even though the executive order is patently illegal, it could still have devastating consequences. We anticipate a large number of Black voters and other people of color who were eligible to vote in many past elections will be wrongfully excluded from the so-called approved vote by mail lists.
The courts must stop this disruptive and alarming plan from ever going into effect. The president’s own voting record belies the purpose of this EO; just last week, he voted by mail, yet he is trying to make that more difficult for others to do.”
Robert Weiner, director of the Voting Rights Project, issued this statement:
“Millions of eligible voters from all backgrounds and political preferences securely vote by mail every year. The president was one of those people last week. The president is on a crusade against mail-in voting that is rational only as an effort to create chaos and suppress votes.
The president has neither the power nor the competence to run elections. The Constitution assigns that authority to the states and, as a backup, to Congress. The federal government needs to let the states do their jobs. Requiring states to use a national list of voters, particularly with the convoluted process outlined in the executive order, is a surefire way to introduce massive errors and exclude eligible voters from exercising their constitutional right to vote.
It’s deeply concerning that the Trump administration wants to amass such a list of citizens and others in the country without any restriction on how it is used. This administration has shown that it cannot be trusted with such information.”
