The second Trump administration has issued executive orders and other presidential directives instituting federal department and agency actions that have impacted election administration by state governments, federal election security and campaign finance agencies, and offices within the U.S. Justice Department for enforcing voting rights protections. The administration's actions on election law and voting rights have occurred alongside the administration's targeting of political opponents and Republican Party efforts to disrupt voting after the 2024 presidential election. Election lawyers at the Brennan Center for Justice and Democracy Docket have described the administration's actions as election subversion, while surveys of U.S. political scientists conducted after Trump returned to office have found a consensus that the United States is transitioning towards illiberal democracy and competitive authoritarianism.
Campaign finance On February 7, 2025, Trump sent the chairwoman of the Federal Election Commission (FEC), Ellen Weintraub, a letter informing her she was fired, but she refused to leave, alleging the attempted removal was illegal. (Weintraub confirmed her firing in October 2025.) She had previously voted to investigate Trump over allegations of collusion between his political campaigns and associated super political action committees, as well as Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections. The commission had deadlocked on many cases involving Trump, with the three Republican commissioners voting against investigation. This action occurred when the FEC was planning adjudication for campaign finance complaints for the 2024 United States elections, especially those involving Elon Musk.
Also in February, Trump signed Executive Order 14215, which placed independent regulatory agencies, including the FEC under his control. The Democratic Party filed a federal lawsuit, claiming that the order violates the Federal Election Campaign Act and that employees of the Democratic Party's campaign groups worried that their strategies for fundraising and communication may lead to an FEC complaint against those groups. This lawsuit was dismissed in June 2025.
On April 30, Republican commissioner Allen Dickerson resigned from the FEC, leading to the commission being without a quorum. This situation prevents the agency from partaking in its usual activities such as voting on investigations, publishing advisory opinions or guidance, or enforcing campaign finance law violations. As of that day, Trump has not made any announcements for new commissioners. In October 2025, Republican Trey Trainor announced his resignation as commissioner, leaving the FEC with only two commissioners.
In July 2025, the Internal Revenue Service allowed for an exemption for religious organizations from the Johnson Amendment, allowing them to make political endorsements without penalty. Jeff Clements, the CEO of American Promise, warned of the risk of dark money and the further loss of trust in elections, while Diane Yentel, the leader of National Council of Nonprofits, viewed the move as being motivated by overhauling campaign finance laws.
Election administration
Voter registration and vote counting On March 26, 2025, Trump signed Executive Order 14248, which called for significant changes to vote registration, ballot casting, and vote counting. Similar to the SAVE Act, the order required proof of citizenship for vote registration for federal elections, but is more restrictive than the bill in its documentation requirements, potentially impacting 146 million Americans who do not have passports. The order also threatened states with federal lawsuits or federal funding losses if they counted mail-in ballots received after Election Day; and empowered the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Government Efficiency to compare state voter registration lists and federal immigration databases. Voting rights activists and analysts expressed alarm, describing the effort as an attempt at both voter suppression and vesting power to the president to control elections. The order requested the Election Assistance Commission (EAC) to make these changes. The executive order also called for the EAC to "rescind all previous certifications of voting equipment based on prior standards", but at the same time for states to use election technology that is not available.
Current members of the board of advisors of the Election Assistance Commission (as of March 2025) include J. Christian Adams (who previously sat on the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity), Hans von Spakovsky (a lawyer for the Heritage Foundation who has falsely alleged widespread voter fraud), and an attorney Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty (which attempted to purge over 200,000 voters from the voter rolls in Wisconsin prior to the 2020 election). As of February 2025, Chris Wlaschin, the chief information security officer for Election Systems and Software is a member of the Technical Guidelines Development Committee as a technical advisor. He was previously the chief information security official at the United States Department of Health and Human Services during the first Trump administration.
On March 31, two separate federal lawsuits challenging the order were filed by the Democratic Party (the Democratic National Committee, Democratic Governors Association, Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries) and two non-profits (the Campaign Legal Center and the State Democracy Defenders Fund), arguing that it violated the Elections Clause of the United States Constitution. On April 24, a federal judge granted a preliminary injunction to block the proof-of-citizen requirement, but denied requests to block the mail-in ballot restrictions and state voter registration list cross-checks. Additional lawsuits were also filed against the order by 19 Democratic state attorneys general on April 3, as well as the states of Washington and Oregon on April 4. On June 13, a federal judge blocked the executive order. In October 2025, a U.S. District judge permanently blocked part of the executive order regarding proof of citizenship. In January 2026, a federal judge blocked the Trump administration from enforcing Trump's executive order in Oregon and Washington state.
In August 2025, Trump stated that he planned to issue an executive order mandating voter identification for all elections in the United States.
In August 2026, Trump pointed to India’s electoral system while pushing for mandatory voter ID in U.S. elections, citing Chief Election Commissioner of India Gyanesh Kumar’s comments on India’s use of photo ID for voting. He said India has a strong voter ID system and the U.S. should adopt something similar. The remarks came as he supported the SAVE America Act, which would require proof of citizenship and photo ID.
Mail-in voting and voting machines
In the aftermath of the 2025 Russia–United States Summit, Trump said that he and Vladimir Putin agreed that mail-in voting risked election integrity. Trump had previously both voted by mail and encouraged his supporters to do so in 2024. Republicans have also previously promoted absentee ballots in states such as Florida for their advantage. Trump had won three states in 2024 where Republicans had encouraged mail-in voting. The BBC credited mail-in ballots for assisting his 2024 election victory.
A few days later, Trump announced that he would sign an executive order that would ban both mail-in ballots and voting machines. Democrats have tended to vote more by mail-in ballots than Republicans, so such a move would likely favor the latter group. Trump had historically favored paper ballots and hand-counting of ballots over electronic voting machines, while election officials criticized the former as being expensive, tedious and of limited accuracy.
Democratic leaders, legal scholars and the American Civil Liberties Union have criticized the move as a form of voter suppression, questioned its legality, and accused Trump of seeking to undermine confidence in elections. David Daley warned that during the 2026 midterm elections, "there will be National Guard troops and masked ICE to intimidate potential Democratic voters in force. You can't intimate people through the mail." Similarly, writing in The Washington Spectator, a former State Department official argued that the expansion of ICE by the One Big Beautiful Bill Act would likely lead to ICE becoming involved in election interference by means of its databases of sensitive information, surveillance of opposition or critics, deputization of local officials, and raids or deployments.
Writing in Slate, Paul Finkelman argued that Republican voters would be disproportionately impacted by abolishing mail-in voting, as many voters who would be affected are rural, working-class, or elderly. He also expressed concern that shifting from voter machines to paper ballots would increase the likelihood of electoral fraud through ballot stuffing. Some Republican officials who otherwise supported Trump disagreed with banning mail-in ballots.
Trump warned each state to comply, stating, "the States are merely an 'agent' for the Federal Government in counting and tabulating the votes." He falsely claimed that the United States was the only country to use mail-in ballots. He said that this proposed executive order would be part of a "movement" that he would lead to end mail-in voting. He also said, "If you [don't] have mail-in voting, you're not gonna have many Democrats get elected." Election experts have responded that the United States Constitution only allows for states to run elections and that Trump's characterizations were incorrect and inappropriate. Later in August, Trump said that he would make an exemption for voters in poor health or military members who are far from home.
In October 2025, Trump called for the end of early voting in advance of the 2025 California Proposition 50 referendum and 2025 New York City mayoral election, contradicting both earlier statements by him supporting early voting for Republican politicians and advice by California state Republican officials.
In March 2026, Trump issued an executive order to the US Postal Service to halt the delivery of mail-in ballots in states that did not hand over voter rolls to the administration.
On June 29, 2026, a national Republican-led legal challenge to bar mail in voting ballots from being counted after election days are held in the United States was struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court.
Department of Justice In March 2025, the Department of Justice (DOJ) withdrew from two lawsuits initiated during the Biden administration related to preventing racial discrimination in voting.
In May 2025, the DOJ charged four people with illegal voting. Press releases by the DOJ and a statement by Kristi Noem, the head of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), credited an unspecified role by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) in its investigations. DOGE members Elon Musk and Antonio Gracias previously stated in March that DOGE compared data from the Social Security Administration to state voter data in an attempt to find non-citizens of the United States who voted, with Gracias referring these cases to DHS' Homeland Security Investigations unit.