Trump’s new voting restrictions ignite fierce pushback from Democrats
By Michael Jones
During the 2022 Senate runoff between Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.) and his Republican challenger Herschel Walker, Georgia’s Secretary of State issued guidance blocking early voting on the Saturday after Thanksgiving. The office pointed to a state law barring early voting when a holiday falls within two days prior.
Warnock’s campaign, the Democratic Party of Georgia, and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee filed suit, arguing the law didn’t apply to runoffs. A Fulton County Superior Court judge agreed, clearing the way for early voting that Saturday.
The senator’s experience was top of mind again last week—this time on a national stage—after President Donald Trump signed an executive order to overhaul federal election procedures with sweeping changes to voter registration and ballot counting.
Critics, including Warnock, call it the latest threat to democracy from the Trump administration. The order marks a sharp departure from Republicans’ traditional deference to states on elections and is viewed as a blatant attempt to silence historically marginalized communities, particularly Black, Brown, Native American, and immigrant voters.
“We’re seeing the president play out of the same playbook, writ large,” Warnock told me. “This should be deeply concerning, and it should not be a partisan issue. It’s a democracy.”
He also noted the irony: While Republicans attacked the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act as a federal overreach, Trump is now trying to impose federal control over state elections himself.
“It’s really interesting,” Warnock said. “When we were trying to pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, we still left voting to the states. [The Act] just made it difficult for people to pressure vote or to cheat. Republicans kept saying, ‘It’s a state issue.’ Now you’ve got the president reaching down from on high, clearly trying to set the table for whatever outcomes he wants.”
The executive order mandates that all voters registering for federal elections provide documentary, government-issued proof of U.S. citizenship. It also directs agencies like the Department of Homeland Security and the Social Security Administration to share data with states to verify eligibility.
In another controversial change, the order requires that all mail-in ballots be received by Election Day to be counted, ending grace periods for ballots postmarked by the date of the election. The order also bans ballots where the vote is embedded in a barcode or QR code and instructs the Election Assistance Commission to enforce that rule.
Attorney General Pam Bondi has been ordered to prioritize the prosecution of non-citizen voting and related offenses.
“In our country, elections are run by the states. The Constitution is very clear in Article I, Section 4, that only states and Congress can make or alter the time, place, and manner of holding federal elections,” said Meagan Irving Tyler, executive vice president of campaigns and strategy at All Voting is Local. “Neither the president, Elon Musk, nor DOGE has the constitutional or legal authority to oversee how states run their elections, nor do they have the power to direct the EAC, which is an independent, bipartisan federal agency.”
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) told me the order wasn’t “worth the paper it has been written on,” predicting the courts would toss it.
The order lands just days before the House is expected to consider the SAVE Act, a Republican bill that aims to prevent noncitizens from voting—despite no evidence of widespread noncitizen voting and existing laws that already prohibit it.
The bill also grants states new authority to purge voter rolls and imposes stricter federal voter ID requirements. It passed the House last Congress mostly along party lines but died in the then-Democratic-controlled Senate.
The executive order and SAVE Act reflect the GOP’s ongoing push to remake U.S. elections under the banner of “election integrity.”
Supporters of tighter rules say voter ID, aggressive roll maintenance, and curbs on mail-in voting are necessary to prevent fraud and protect public confidence in elections.
But voting rights advocates argue these policies disproportionately disenfranchise eligible voters and undermine democratic participation.
Rep. Joe Morelle (D-N.Y.), the ranking member on the committee overseeing federal election law, told me Trump’s executive order and the SAVE Act are part of a larger strategy to erode democratic institutions—including the free press and the judiciary.
“It is a strategy. It’s done intentionally,” he said. “You eliminate the free press; you eliminate the independent judiciary. You stop people from being able to register to vote and to vote, and you suppress that vote. Those are the beginnings in a real serious way foundationally of a dictatorship.”
Still, Meagan Irving Tyler of All Voting is Local emphasized that voters shouldn’t feel helpless.
“We need voters to understand and learn about how elections are actually run in their communities,” she said. “Voters should attend their local Board of Elections meetings or sign up to be poll workers. Fight to make sure your voice will be heard in elections in your community this year, in 2026, and beyond.”
Michael Jones is an independent Capitol Hill correspondent and contributor for COURIER. He is the author of Once Upon a Hill, a newsletter about Congressional politics.
