President Trump has escalated his efforts to influence American elections, signing an executive order that the White House says seeks to create a list of confirmed U.S. citizens who are eligible to vote in each state and use the U.S. Postal Service to "verify" mail ballots are for voters.
Speaking just now, Trump said he believes the order is "foolproof." But election experts have already said the order — which was first reported by The Daily Caller — would face immediate legal challenges.
A previous executive order on elections, signed about a year ago, has been blocked by federal judges who said the president lacked the constitutional authority to set voting policy. The Constitution is clear that states run their own elections, with Congress able to set policy.
Trump has long railed — baselessly — about widespread illegal voting by noncitizens and mail voting fraud.
The executive order comes as Trump's Justice Department is seeking sensitive voter data from states, and is engaged in more than two dozen lawsuits for that data. The administration claims it needs the data to enforce states' voter list maintenance.
A DOJ official admitted in court last week that the department plans to share that data with the Department of Homeland Security, to run it through the so-called SAVE system to search for noncitizens. NPR has reported that some U.S. citizens have also been inaccurately flagged by SAVE.
And the order also comes as Trump pressures Republicans in Congress to pass the SAVE America Act, a sweeping election overhaul that would impose new voter identification and documentation requirements. That bill is stalled in the Senate due to Democratic opposition and the legislative filibuster.
This is a breaking news story and will be updated.
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