An official ballot box for Maryland voters in Wheaton, Maryland, on June 7, 2026. (Photo by Jane Norman/States Newsroom)
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security will allow states to access federal citizenship data through June 30 and plans to monitor the flow of mail-in ballots for signs of voter fraud, a court document says.
Amid a series of lawsuits, President Donald Trump’s administration is now preparing to make a decision on March 31 Implementing regulation Restricting postal voting before the midterm elections in November.
Democrats and voting rights activists are against the directive Trump called the election interference unconstitutional and sued to stop it. The president, who has long criticized mail-in ballots but votes by mail himself, says the additional rules would combat non-citizen voting, a sporadic phenomenon.
“No president has the authority to unilaterally rewrite the election rules or dictate how states conduct their elections,” Marcia Johnson, director of activation and justice at the League of Women Voters, said in a statement last week. The League of Women Voters filed one of at least five lawsuits challenging the order.
Possible disruptions
The order could have sedate consequences for the midterm elections. Any fresh restrictions on mail-in voting would disrupt the way millions of voters cast their ballots. According to the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, about 30% of voters cast mail-in ballots in 2024.
But despite several legal challenges, the order remains in effect.
A federal judge in Washington, D.C., in overdue May decided against an application Democratic groups called for the order to be repealed, noting that it was too early to comment because federal officials had not yet taken enough action. A second judge in Massachusetts held a hearing last week but did not immediately issue a decision.
“The Trump administration will continue to fight for the security of America’s elections,” White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson said in a statement shortly after the D.C. judge’s decision.
Part of the order requires the postmaster general to impose fresh restrictions on mail-in ballots and not transmit ballots from states that refuse to provide the names of mail-in voters. The US Postal Service did this despite its status as an independent company make a suggestion consistent with the order requiring states to provide voter lists before mailing ballots.
Now Homeland Security is responding to another part of the order that requires the creation of lists of eligible voters in each state, which the Trump administration calls “citizenship lists.” State election officials would receive the lists that they could compare with their voter lists when searching for noncitizen voters.
The Department of Homeland Security’s plans for the citizenship lists came into focus on June 5, when the U.S. Department of Justice filed a notice in federal court briefly outlining the administration’s plans. The Announcement describes a two-part effort by the Department of Homeland Security and its affiliate, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, to comply with the order.
First, Homeland Security will implement “State Voter Roll Verification,” allowing state election officials to submit their voter rolls to the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) system.
SAVE is a powerful computer program This involves comparing names with citizenship information stored in various government databases. It can flag registered voters as possible non-citizens, but has faced criticism for misidentifications.
States have had the opportunity to upload their voter lists to SAVE for a year now. Some Republican-led states such as Indiana, Texas and Wyoming have used the system, while Democratic states have rejected it. It is unclear how, if at all, state voter roll verification would differ from states’ current SAVE access.
Homeland Security and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services did not respond to questions from the state newsroom.
Second, the Justice Department notice states that Homeland Security will establish a registry for state election officials to securely access “citizenship-related data” from USCIS, the Social Security Administration, and the State Department.
According to the statement, the “underlying data would remain within each agency’s system.” No further details were disclosed.
The notice also outlines the Department of Homeland Security’s intention to utilize the voter lists that states provide to the Postal Service for investigations. It says DHS wants to “integrate” data about these voters “to monitor absentee and absentee ballot flows, identify anomalies that could indicate voter fraud or abuse, and generate authorized investigative leads.”
California elections
The announcement comes as Trump renews his attacks on mail-in voting. Last week he claimed, without evidence, voter fraud in California, which had a primary election last week. California relies heavily on mail-in ballots and is often sluggish to count votes — meaning the final results sometimes don’t match election night vote totals.
“Do you know why they’re doing this? Because they’re cheating on the election,” Trump said an interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
While the executive order is already facing a number of lawsuits, the NAACP on June 3rd submitted an application in federal court with the goal of specifically blocking the Postal Service’s proposed rules for mail-in ballots. The NAACP claims the regulations violate a 2021 settlement agreement that requires the timely delivery of absentee ballots to all voters.
The Post has until Thursday to respond.
The American Postal Workers Union condemned the order in a June 5 statement, saying the Postal Service serves all Americans. It is “not a tool for politicians” to choose which Americans receive which benefits, the union said.
“The Executive Order is an unconstitutional attack on the millions of Americans who vote by mail,” the union said, “and another front in the ongoing attack on voting rights in the United States of America.”
