Trump Pushes 30-State Voting Records Lawsuits, Mail Voting Limits — Trump Voting Rights Lawsuits

Donald Trump is using trump voting rights lawsuits, FBI investigations, and a late-March executive order to tighten voting rules and limit voting by mail. The Justice Department has filed cases seeking sensitive voter data from 30 states, and those disputes are already moving through federal courts.

Trump’s order drew a lawsuit in early April from officials in 23 Democratic states, including California and Washington DC. They argued the directive was an unconstitutional effort to interfere with states administering their elections.

Trump’s March voting order

Trump issued the executive order in late March, and it sharply tightened mail-in voting rules. The order also gave the United States Postal Service unprecedented powers to issue new rules making voting by mail harder.

The administration’s broader push reaches beyond that order. The Justice Department has 30 active lawsuits against states and the District of Columbia seeking turnover of sensitive voter records, while the FBI has launched investigations into debunked allegations of voting fraud in Georgia, Wisconsin and a few other swing states Trump lost in 2020.

DoJ record fights

Eileen O’Connor, senior counsel with the Brennan Center and a former DoJ voting section official, said the department is seeking information it has no authority to collect. “The Department of Justice has no authority to sweep up the voter rolls, which contain private information like drivers’ licenses and social security numbers, from every state in the nation,” she said.

She added that the litigation has already run into resistance in court. “The department has 30 active lawsuits against states and the District of Columbia to force the turnover of these sensitive records. So far, eight courts have issued rulings in these cases, and the DoJ has lost each one.”

Trump and the midterms

Trump tied the stakes to his own political future in January, telling lawmakers at a Republican House retreat, “You gotta win the midterms, because if we don’t win the midterms, it’s just gonna be … I mean, they’ll find a reason to impeach me,” The court losses give opponents a concrete opening to keep pressing the legal challenge, while Trump’s team keeps using the same agencies and the same March order to push the effort forward.