President Donald Trump’s new executive order aimed at tightening up election administration has triggered a wave of concern among voting-rights advocates who say it will likely make casting a ballot harder for millions of American citizens.

Liberal-leaning advocates are also concerned Trump’s order gives the federal government unusually broad power to dictate how elections are managed, a process that’s typically run by county-level officials and overseen by secretaries of state.

Conservative activists welcomed Trump’s order as a necessary step to ensuring the sanctity of American elections, though studies have consistently shown that very few non-citizens cast illegal ballots.
Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a Republican who in 2021 tangled with Trump over the accuracy of the state’s count, lauded the new executive order as a “great first step for election integrity reform nationwide.”

The order likely faces significant legal challenges, and continues a longstanding battle between liberal and conservative groups over voting security, ballot access and who ultimately decides elections. One study found that as many as 10% of otherwise eligible voters in Georgia would be blocked from voting because they lack citizenship documentation even though they are citizens; 7% of Texans lack it.
“A president does not set election law and never will,” Virginia Kase Solomón, president and CEO of the Common Cause watchdog group said in a statement. “Trump’s executive action is an attempt to take away our right to vote or make it so hard that we don’t participate.”