Why Trump’s recent executive order on elections would not strengthen them

For the past four years, former Republican NC Supreme Court Justice Bob Orr and I have traveled our state, giving 37 separate town halls, to help NC citizens understand the checks and balances in our election administration.  Every one of our informational panels had a county elections director and a Republican and a Democratic election board member, explaining how fairly and securely our elections are administered and our ballots are counted.

We learned a lot along the way as well. After hearing experts explain how the registration, list maintenance, and vote counting works in North Carolina, I have a better understanding about how the checks and balances in our system work to ensure integrity and trust. Many aspects of the March 25 EO (Executive Order) “Preserving and Protecting the Integrity of American Elections” would erode that. Here are just a few reasons why:

      The EO would give access to every state voter registration list to DOGE. This is not necessary, as our state already maintains voter rolls meticulously, including receiving death certificates from HHS and removing names, moving voters to inactive status, removing names of those who have moved, all on a regular basis. On the other hand, knowing that their data would be mined in a federal database would dissuade people concerned about privacy from registering. In 2017 when Trump made a similar attempt to access voter data, 44 states rejected it.

2.     The requirement that voters show proof of citizenship to register would disenfranchise thousands of voters, when so many do not possess a passport or a legal copy of their own birth certificate - and many married women do not have the same name as their birth certificate. The report of thousands of non-citizens voting is a myth. In fact, a 2020 report by the conservative Cato Institute concluded that the numbers of noncitizens voting is “miniscule.” In a March 31 article, the AP notes, “Multiple studies and investigations in individual states have shown that noncitizens casting ballots in federal elections, already a felony, is exceedingly rare.”

3.     The EO correctly cites the need to decrease the ability of foreign national and foreign governments to lobby or otherwise interfere in US elections. However, recent cuts to CISA (the federal Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Agency) and to the staff of prosecutors who have been pursuing unregistered foreign agents does the exact opposite.  CISA has interrupted hacks and bots from foreign actors over the years but will now be LESS able to do so. The way to make voting systems more secure would be to INCREASE resources for CISA.

4.     The EO would not allow any ballots received after election day to be counted, in any state, and asks the DOJ to take “all necessary action” against states that do. Some states allow ballots postmarked by election day to be accepted, which allows time for voters in rural or distant areas to account for slow postal service.  In NC, a state law already directs the state to accept only ballots received by 7:30 pm on election day, but allows an exception for military and overseas voters. This EO would lead the DOJ to sue various states including NC over this practice. Any reduction in mail-in ballots would adversely impact elderly, rural, overseas and disabled voters and would disenfranchise many. It would impact voters most in states that rely heavily on mail-in ballots: Alaska, California, and Pennsylvania.

We learned from cyber experts in our town halls that a strength of our national system of voting is the fact that each of the 50 states administers their own elections. This power is set out in the Elections Clause of the US Constitution (Article 1, Sec 4). This means states can tailor them to fit the needs of their geography, demographics, and culture. It also means that it would be very hard to hack each of the 50 systems at the same time, bring down data systems with every US voter’s information, or wreak havoc in a way that could disrupt the integrity of national elections. Federal directives like this EO would weaken the integrity of our 50-state system, not strengthen it. According to a recent Brookings Institution analysis, given the number of legal questions* surrounding this EO, it remains to be seen whether the Election Assistance Commission will be obligated to comply. For the sake of American election security, let’s hope not.

According to an AP report, “The Campaign Legal Center and the State Democracy Defenders Fund brought the first lawsuit Monday afternoon. The DNC, the Democratic Governors Association, and Senate and House Democratic leaders followed soon after with a complaint of their own” against the the Trump EO on elections.

Jennifer Roberts is an American politician, businesswoman and former diplomat who served as the 58th mayor of Charlotte, N.C.