President Donald Trump's persistent efforts to alter U.S. election rules have encountered significant legal and political obstacles, leading to mixed results. Despite his widespread focus on election integrity, many of his initiatives have been stymied, with courts and Congress limiting his influence.
Trump's attempts have included executive orders, pushing restrictive legislation, and directing the Department of Justice to investigate voting operations. However, recent Supreme Court and lower court rulings have rejected several of his broad executive orders aimed at changing national election procedures. These setbacks follow a series of legal defeats that barred his administration from obtaining detailed state voter data and stalled attempts to pass legislation like the SAVE Act, which proposed to significantly restrict absentee voting and impose nationwide voter identification requirements.
"It's been a mixed bag for Republicans," said Derek Muller, a law professor at the University of Notre Dame. "But the president... has come up mostly empty-handed."
Despite these challenges, Trump's influence has not been entirely absent. Republican-led states have proceeded with redrawing congressional district lines, an effort that gained momentum after the Supreme Court struck down a key part of the Voting Rights Act. His administration has also directed the Department of Justice to scrutinize election processes, a move that Democrats view as a potential precursor to further election challenges.
The former president's fixation on what he falsely claims was a rigged 2020 election has driven much of this activity. His frustration with the inability to advance the SAVE Act in the Senate even led him to refuse signing a bipartisan housing bill.
Trump has frequently stated that U.S. elections are susceptible to fraud, particularly due to noncitizen voting. However, research indicates that noncitizen voting is exceedingly rare, accounting for a tiny fraction of election fraud cases.
One significant effort involved a multiagency push to nationalize voter data and use federal resources to assist states in removing voters from registration lists. The Department of Justice sought extensive voter files from various states, including sensitive information like dates of birth and partial Social Security numbers. This move was met with resistance from Democratic and some Republican secretaries of state, leading to federal lawsuits that the administration has lost.
The Department of Homeland Security, with assistance from a DOGE effort led by Elon Musk, updated a federal tool called SAVE (Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements) to identify potentially ineligible voters. A federal judge recently blocked its use as a mass citizenship check, ruling that the administration had "knowingly trampled on the privacy rights of American citizens in a manner that threatens the sacred right to vote."
Trump has also utilized executive orders to enact policy preferences when Congress has not acted. His first order, focusing on noncitizens, aimed to require proof of citizenship for voter registration, similar to the SAVE Act. A federal judge placed a temporary block on this order, later making it permanent, stating the Constitution "does not grant the President any specific powers over elections."
A second executive order in March sought to create a national voter list using data from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and the Social Security Administration. This order would have also given the U.S. Postal Service authority to determine absentee ballot eligibility and threatened local election officials with prosecution. Mail voting, a common practice in U.S. elections, has been inaccurately described by Trump as a vehicle for fraud, even though he has used it himself. Studies indicate that mail voting fraud occurs at an extremely low rate.
Legal challenges to this second order resulted in a federal judge ruling that its provisions "unconstitutionally violate the separation of powers." The White House has stated its intention to appeal these decisions.
The SAVE Act has faced significant opposition in the Senate, with bipartisan disagreement and Republican senators expressing opposition to the bill itself. Trump has acknowledged that the bill is "probably not going to happen."
Both major political parties maintain national operations dedicated to election monitoring, including legal teams prepared to contest election outcomes. Despite a recent legal setback, the Republican National Committee has vowed to continue efforts to ensure elections conclude on Election Day.
Trump's administration has also pursued investigations into election fraud. In June, a U.S. attorney in Los Angeles announced multiple investigations, and prosecutors sought records related to the 2020 election in Georgia's Fulton County. Experts suggest that obtaining judicial warrants for such actions during an active election would face a higher bar. The ongoing focus on election rules and investigations has, according to some analysts, succeeded in undermining public confidence in the election process for both Republicans and Democrats.