Nineteen Democratic attorneys general filed a lawsuit alleging President Donald Trump’s recent executive order concerning election reforms and expanding voter ID requirements was unconstitutional.
The lawsuit, which was filed in federal court in Massachusetts on Thursday, claimed that “neither the Constitution nor Congress has authorized the President to impose documentary proof of citizenship requirements or to modify state mail-ballot procedures.”
Attorneys general from Arizona, California, Connecticut, Colorado, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Mexico, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Wisconsin joined the lawsuit, with their action coming as Democratic attorneys general have emerged as the Left’s leading source of opposition to the Trump administration.
“It bears emphasizing: the President has no power to do any of this,” the chief state legal officers wrote in court filings. “The Elections EO is unconstitutional, antidemocratic, and un-American.”
The lawsuit responded to the president’s March 25 executive action, which instituted requirements for documentary proof of citizenship for the national voter registration form and mandated that mail-in ballots arrive on Election Day.
Trump argued that enacting such requirements, which have been similarly recently put in place by states such as Utah, was necessary to enhance the integrity of the election process and keep illegal immigrants from voting.
“We’re going to fix our elections so that our elections are going to be honorable and honest and people leave and they know their vote is counted. We are going to have free and fair elections,” the president wrote. “And ideally, we go to paper ballots, same-day voting, proof of citizenship, very big, and voter ID, very simple.”
Democrats argued otherwise. New York Attorney General Letitia James said she believed Trump’s executive order represented an attempt to “intimidate voters, and limit Americans’ right to vote [that] is unconstitutional, undemocratic, and frankly, un-American.”
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“We are a democracy — not a monarchy — and this Executive Order is an authoritarian power grab,” she said in a statement. “With this Order, this President is prioritizing his own quest for unchecked power above the rights and will of the public.”
Trump’s effort to increase voter ID requirements and reform mail-in voting systems has already been targeted in a number of other lawsuits, including from left-wing organizations and top Democratic organizations, as well as party leaders.