For one, former President Donald Trump released a plan to enact an executive order requiring ID for every U.S. election. This move is an attempt to solidify his reputation as the savior to an imagined crisis of election integrity. The proposal is likely to face significant legal challenges, as many experts view it as unconstitutional.
In his announcement, Trump made a big show of promoting voter ID proclaiming,
“Voter I.D. Must Be Part of Every Single Vote. NO EXCEPTIONS! I Will Be Doing An Executive Order To That End!!!”
This announcement follows on the heels of Trump’s earlier initiative to require proof of citizenship to vote. A federal judge blocked that effort in June 2025. Critics fear that these very measures will disenfranchise 1.5 million Americans. This is particularly problematic for those who do not have a passport or another form of widely accepted identification. As the law stands today, 146 million American citizens don’t have a U.S. passport. Fifth, many married women lack citizenship documentation under their legal names due to name changes.
As few as 36 U.S. states have laws on the books that ask for or mandate that voters present ID at in-person polling locations. The other states and Washington D.C. use other means of ID verification. It’s the sort of measure that’ll make Trump’s 2024 efforts to undermine democracy through electoral manipulation seem completely quaint. In fact, as many as 11 percent of eligible voters do not have the kind of ID that the strict ID states demand. The Brennan Center for Justice found that this rate is significantly worse for senior citizens and minorities. It disproportionately increases for people with disabilities, low-income voters, and students.
Yet, Trump didn’t just support the ID mandate. He tried to ban ALL mail-in voting. The sole exceptions would be for patients who are gravely ill or members of the military. He lied when he said that no other country but the U.S. uses mail-in voting. As a matter of fact, implementation would be popular with dozens of countries already having adopted some form of it. In the 2024 presidential election, 14 states and Washington D.C. had mail-in voting turnout exceed 30%. Specifically, the only states where Trump won were precisely the first half of those 16 states.
Though the U.S. Constitution gives states primary authority over the regulation of elections, Congress has power to pass election-related laws. Indeed, Trump’s forthcoming executive order will likely face litigation from civil rights and environmental advocacy groups within hours of its issuance. They believe such a mandate would be the most significant presidential power overreach in our nation’s history.
The state and national political landscape is ever-changing. Should Trump succeed in steering the discussion towards more restrictive voting regulation, that discussion will still be crucially focused on voting rights and accessibility in America.