What’s in the Executive Order: Ensuring Citizenship Verification & Voter Eligibility in Federal Elections

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PRESIDENT TRUMP’S NEW EXECUTIVE ORDER MAKES AMERICAN ELECTIONS MORE SECURE, TRANSPARENT, AND ACCOUNTABLE

On March 31, 2026, President Trump signed an Executive Order (EO) titled “Ensuring Citizenship Verification and Voter Eligibility in Federal Elections.” This EO contains multiple provisions that protect voters, helping to ensure accuracy and accountability in American elections.

WHAT DOES THE EXECUTIVE ORDER DO?

• Establishes a federal citizenship list, utilizing existing federal government databases to provide states with information for the purpose of cross-checking state voter rolls.
  • WHY THIS MATTERS: Only American citizens should vote in American elections. Every lawful vote should count, and no lawful vote should be canceled out by an illegal one. AFPI has long championed the commonsense reform of documentary proof of citizenship. Federal law prohibits non-citizen voting, but non-citizens remain on voter rolls and have voted. The federal government should support states in efforts to ensure voter rolls do not have non-citizens present; a non-citizen registered to vote creates a significant vulnerability for secure elections.
• Tasks the United States Postal Service with improving security and accountability around mail-in ballots.
  • WHY THIS MATTERS: Mass mail-in ballots jeopardize the critical chain-of-custody required to ensure ballot accuracy. Previous policies allowed for unsecured ballot drop boxes, ballot harvesting, opportunities for ballot tampering and ballot loss, which has been significant. While there are valid reasons for voters to submit mail-in ballots, these must be limited in order to curtail vulnerabilities in ballot chain-of-custody. This EO creates better security standards for the envelopes in which ballots are mailed, as well as ensuring USPS is only mailing ballots to individuals eligible to receive them and finally improves ballot chain-of-custody through unique intelligent mail barcodes.
• Empowers the Attorney General to investigate and prosecute election officials, individuals, and entities that issue or distribute federal ballots to ineligible voters.
  • WHY THIS MATTERS: A law is only as good as the enforcement behind it. The federal government must ensure that any individuals, entities, or processes that enable illegal voting are prosecuted to the full extent of the law. Protecting American elections is a critically important component of the foundations of our society.

Voters deserve trustworthy and transparent elections. They need to know that their ballots are counted as cast, and that there are security measures in place to protect against disenfranchisement through illegible ballots being cast. One fraudulent ballot is one too many.