Common Cause, the NAACP, and Black Voters Matter have filed a federal lawsuit challenging President Trump’s March 31, 2026 Executive Order, which attempts to seize control of who can vote in federal elections, weaponize the U.S. Postal Service against mail-in voters, and threaten local election officials with criminal prosecution. A federal court in Washington, D.C. will now decide whether the President has the power to unilaterally rewrite the rules of American elections. 

Common Cause Joins NAACP and Black Voters Matter to Block Trump’s Election Power Grab 

By law, it is Congress and the states — not the President — that have the authority to regulate federal elections. Yet on March 31, 2026, just days after the U.S. Senate once again rejected his preferred election legislation, President Trump signed an Executive Order entitled “Ensuring Citizenship Verification and Integrity in Federal Elections,” attempting to do by executive fiat what he could not get done through Congress. 

The order would force the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to compile so-called “State Citizenship Lists” drawn from notoriously inaccurate federal databases, direct the U.S. Postal Service to block the delivery of mail-in ballots for anyone not on a federally controlled list, and instruct the Department of Justice (DOJ) to investigate and prosecute state and local election officials who allow voters not approved by DHS to cast a ballot. 

What Trump’s Executive Order Actually Does 

Trump’s order creates a sweeping and confusing new system designed to give the federal executive branch veto power over who can vote. Specifically, the order: 

• Directs DHS to compile a list of purportedly eligible voters in each state, drawn from the SAVE immigration database and Social Security records — databases that are incomplete, outdated, and not designed to verify citizenship or state residence. 
• Orders the U.S. Postal Service, an independent agency, to refuse delivery of mail-in and absentee ballots for any voter not enrolled on a federally created “Mail-In and Absentee Participation List” — without any requirement to notify the voter or the state that their ballot was blocked. 
• Threatens criminal prosecution of state and local election officials, individuals, and organizations that help voters cast ballots if the federal government views those voters as ineligible — a provision that directly chills voter assistance work by organizations like Common Cause, the NAACP, and Black Voters Matter. 

• Threatens to withhold federal funding from any state that does not comply with the order’s demands. 

Why the Databases Trump Is Relying On Cannot Be Trusted 

The Executive Order rests on a foundation of flawed data. The federal databases it relies upon are not designed to verify voter eligibility — and courts and government auditors have repeatedly found them to be unreliable for that purpose. 

The SSA database does not consistently maintain citizenship data for Americans born before 1981 — meaning more than 140 million people may not be verifiable as citizens through SSA records alone. SSA itself has stated that its citizenship records “merely represent a snapshot” of a person’s status at the time they interacted with the agency, and that SSA “is not the agency responsible for making citizenship determinations.” 

The DHS SAVE system was created to check immigration status for benefits eligibility — not to identify U.S. citizens. A North Carolina audit found that 97.6% of people flagged as noncitizens by SAVE were, in fact, citizens. Even the DOJ has acknowledged in court that SAVE has “holes in the process,” particularly for derived citizens whose parents naturalized when they were minors. Relying on these databases to determine who can vote — and whose ballot gets delivered — will inevitably result in the disenfranchisement of millions of eligible Americans. 

A Pattern of Unconstitutional Overreach 

This Executive Order is not Trump’s first attempt to seize control of elections. In March 2025, he issued Executive Order 14248, which attempted to impose restrictive documentary proof of citizenship requirements on voter registration. A federal court struck that order down, concluding that “the President has no constitutional power over election regulation that would support this unilateral exercise of authority.” Two other federal courts reached the same conclusion. 

Despite those rulings, the President issued this new order — an escalation that the lawsuit describes as a continuation of the same illegal power grab. The timing is telling: the order was signed just days after the Senate voted down the SAVE America Act, the legislation through which Trump had sought to enact many similar voting restrictions. When Congress refused to act, Trump acted anyway. 

What Is at Risk: Millions of Voters, Ahead of the 2026 Midterms 

The stakes could not be higher. Nearly one in three Americans cast their ballot by mail in the 2024 federal election. Racial minorities rely on mail voting at especially high rates — roughly 18% of Black voters, one-third of Hispanic voters, and half of Asian American voters cast mail ballots in 2024. These same communities already face disproportionate rates of mail ballot rejection. 

If this order takes effect, eligible voters could find their ballots blocked by the Postal Service with no notice and no clear path to challenge their exclusion. Voter registration and assistance organizations — including Common Cause, the NAACP, and Black Voters Matter — could face federal investigation simply for helping voters navigate the voting process. And states that refuse to comply with the order’s unconstitutional demands could lose critical federal funding. 

What Happens Next 

Common Cause, the NAACP, and Black Voters Matter are asking the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to declare the Executive Order unconstitutional and permanently block its implementation. The lawsuit argues that the order violates the separation of powers, usurps authority that the Constitution assigns exclusively to Congress and the states, unconstitutionally burdens the fundamental right to vote, exceeds the President’s authority over the independent U.S. Postal Service, and violates the Privacy Act by directing federal agencies to share sensitive personal data without lawful authorization.