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President Trump is making another attempt to reshape federal elections. This time, he has a new executive order that would further restrict who can vote by mail, but many legal and election experts are expecting the courts to stop it. NPR's Hansi Lo Wang reports.
HANSI LO WANG, BYLINE: President Trump is calling for his administration to use federal data to create lists of adult U.S. citizens in each state. States can review and suggest changes. And according to Trump's order, the U.S. Postal Service would be banned from delivering mail-in ballots to anyone not on those lists.
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PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: I believe it's foolproof. And maybe it'll be tested. Maybe it won't.
WANG: Does the president have any power under the Constitution to change election rules like this?
NED FOLEY: No. Not unless Congress delegates that authority pursuant to congressional power.
WANG: Ned Foley is an election law professor at the Ohio State University.
FOLEY: Election rules are set by states unless Congress decides to override state law for congressional elections specifically.
WANG: Foley says he expects lawsuits against Trump's order to make their way through the federal courts quickly in this midterm election year. Before signing the order, Trump defended it as a way to stop illegal voting by noncitizens in federal elections, which is already incredibly rare.
MARK LINDEMAN: This executive order is addressing a problem that does not exist.
WANG: Mark Lindeman of Verified Voting, a group that advocates for election security, points out states already have systems in place to make sure only eligible voters receive mail-in ballots and only valid ones are counted.
LINDEMAN: What I would say about mail voting is that if it ain't broke, don't break it, which is what I fear this executive order would do if put into effect.
JENA GRISWOLD: Trump, you know, says mail ballots are illegitimate. He just voted by mail last week. What he wants to do is to suppress the vote.
WANG: Jena Griswold is Colorado's Democratic secretary of state. She says this order would hurt the votes of not just registered Democrats or unaffiliated voters but also Republicans, who, in a Colorado election last year, voted overwhelmingly by mail. Griswold says she sees Trump's new order as another way for the administration to access sensitive data about registered voters.
GRISWOLD: They are actually suing a lot of states at this point to try to get our voter lists, but they're losing in court.
WANG: And Griswold says she expects the Trump administration will lose again in court, after Colorado joins a growing list of states set to sue over the order.
Hansi Lo Wang, NPR News.
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