Posting on his Truth Social social media platform, President Donald Trump announced his plan to mandate everything from voter ID to in-person, paper ballots for American elections, indicating that, in his view, such massive changes to how we do elections are needed to keep American elections safe from nefarious actors. Many conservatives celebrated the news online.
As background, this isn’t President Trump’s first move to require Voter ID in every election. He initially tried doing so with an executive order shortly after being elected, but the Voter ID portions of that E.O. were struck down in April by Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.
In her ruling, the judge insisted that Trump did not have the authority to issue the order, writing, “Consistent with that allocation of power, Congress is currently debating legislation that would affect many of the changes the President purports to order.” Continuing, the Clinton-appointed judge said, “No statutory delegation of authority to the Executive Branch permits the President to short-circuit Congress’s deliberative process by executive order.”
Still, requiring proof of citizenship to vote remains an exceedingly popular idea amongst Americans, with a Gallup poll from around the time of the 2024 election finding that a massive 84% of American adults supported requiring voters to show citizenship identification when voting, and 83% of Americans supporting requiring proof of citizenship when registering for the first time. The poll even found that about two-thirds of Democrats support such a policy.
So, the president has stuck by the policy and indicated, in a Truth Social post that came late in the evening on Saturday, August 30, that he and his team are working on a new executive order that will require a slew of changes to American elections, from requiring voter ID to generally banning mail-in voting.
In that post, the president said, “Voter I.D. Must Be Part of Every Single Vote. NO EXCEPTIONS! I Will Be Doing An Executive Order To That End!!! Also, No Mail-In Voting, Except For Those That Are Very Ill, And The Far Away Military. USE PAPER BALLOTS ONLY!!! President DJT”
Commenting on what might be going on with Trump renewing the Voter ID effort despite the April ruling, one generally conservative X account noted that he could be trying to pressure Republicans in Congress into going along with his demands, as he appears to lack the authority to issue such an order.
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That account wrote, “Trump has announced his intent to sign an executive order requiring Voter ID and banning mail-in ballots nationwide. He doesn’t have the authority to do that, but he may just be riling up his base to put pressure on Republicans in Congress who could potentially make it happen if they increase their seats in the midterms, or if they use the ‘nuclear option’ to prevent a filibuster and pass it with a simple majority.”
Watch the president call for similar changes to be made to voting in America, from a reliance on paper ballots to a Voter ID requirement, here: