Tuesday, April 1, 2025 - The United States Democratic Party has urged a US court to block President Donald Trump’s executive order overhauling the election system, arguing that the changes risked denying eligible US citizens the right to vote.
The Democratic National Committee, in a lawsuit against the
Trump administration filed in Washington, DC federal court, said Trump exceeded
his authority in the March 25 order by requiring voters to prove they are US
citizens, preventing states from counting mail-in ballots received after
Election Day, and threatening to take federal funding away from states that do
not comply.
According to the lawsuit, filed by longtime Democratic
election lawyer Marc Elias and other lawyers at his firm, the Executive Order
seeks to impose radical changes on how Americans register to vote, cast a
ballot, and participate in our democracy, all of which threaten to
disenfranchise lawful voters and none of which is legal.
It was gathered that US Senator Chuck Schumer and US
Representative Hakeem Jeffries, the leaders of the Democratic minorities in the
US Senate and House of Representatives, respectively, are also plaintiffs in
the case.
The Trump administration has previously argued that the
order would prevent foreign nationals from interfering in US elections.
Trump has long questioned the US electoral system and
continues to claim that his 2020 loss to Democratic President Joe Biden was the
result of widespread fraud.
The president and his Republican allies also have made
claims about widespread voting by non-citizens, which is illegal and rarely
occurs.
In their lawsuit, the Democrats said the
US Constitution empowers individual states and Congress, not the president, to
control how federal elections are conducted.
“The
Framers of our federal Constitution foresaw that self-interested and
self-aggrandizing leaders might seek to corrupt our democratic system of
government to expand and preserve their own power,” the lawsuit read.
In addition, voting rights groups
including the Campaign Legal Center and State Democracy Defenders Fund brought
a separate legal challenge to the executive order.
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