Trump hits a wall on voter fraud
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President Trump's voter fraud crusade is crashing into the limits of his power ahead of November's midterm elections.
Why it matters: Trump has made cracking down on alleged mass voter fraud a priority, but his election-related executive orders are stalled in court and his legislative fix is stuck in the Senate.
Zoom in: Senate Republicans have defied Trump on the SAVE America Act, which would require proof of U.S. citizenship to register to vote.
- Trump has retaliated by threatening not to sign any legislation without it. But Senate Republicans insist they don't have the votes to pass it, even if they tried to gut their own rules in the process.
He's also been stonewalled by the courts:
- A D.C. court on Monday blocked Trump's expansion of the SAVE (Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements) database — to scan local voter files for noncitizens. The new database created a centralized list that includes data on U.S. citizens, not just immigrants.
- Another district court in Boston ruled on Wednesday against the implementation of one of Trump's first executive orders demanding a citizenship verification at registration.
- The administration is expected to appeal. This could eventually escalate the cases to the Supreme Court, which recently ruled in Trump's favor on immigration policy-related cases.
Friction point: These court defeats have raised the stakes for passing the SAVE America Act.
- On Wednesday, just before cancelling a signing ceremony for a housing bill that the White House supported, Trump said passing the SAVE Act was a "national emergency."
- In February, he posted "The Save America Act must pass!!!" along with the screenshot from another social media user showing Trump leading the 2020 election before all the votes were counted.
- "PASS THE SAVE AMERICA ACT, NOW. It's all people care about!!!" was the president's plea in March. "Stop playing games," warned another post in May.
What they're saying: "President Trump is committed to ensuring that Americans have full confidence in the administration of our elections. The President's executive order lawfully protects our elections, and we are confident that we will ultimately prevail in its implementation," White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said in a statement.
- "President Trump has also urged Congress to pass the SAVE America Act and other legislative proposals that would establish a uniform standard of photo ID for voting, prohibit no-excuse mail-in voting, and end the practice of ballot harvesting to secure our elections for generations to come," she said.
- "[W]hat the administration is comfortable with is ... disenfranchising a bunch of people, and trading off our privacy ... so that they can be 150% sure [there's no voter fraud]," said Hanna Hickman, senior counsel at Democracy Forward.
The bottom line: Instances of voter fraud are rare, but searching for cases has become a priority for the executive branch.
- ICE agents and attorneys have been querying local election officials for specific voter files for "ongoing cases." They've obtained voter files in Webb County in Texas and Forsyth County in North Carolina.
- The Homeland Security Department installed election integrity activist Heather Honey, best known for questioning elections and voter rolls accuracy in Pennsylvania and Arizona, as a deputy assistant secretary.
- The Department of Justice is also suing multiple states to gain access to their voter rolls.
