President Donald Trump returned to social media Monday with another barrage of unsubstantiated statements about the integrity of elections, following a meeting in which Russian President Vladimir Putin reportedly claimed that U.S. elections were “rigged” because of mail‑in voting.

This article was originally published by Votebeat, a nonprofit news organization covering local election administration and voting access.

Seizing on that assertion — despite there being no credible evidence to support it — Trump promised on Truth Social to “lead a movement” to phase out mail‑in ballots and voting machines, and promote “watermark paper.” He suggested he would implement these changes with an executive order ahead of the 2026 midterms.

The post contains many other false, misleading, or unsubstantiated statements about the use of mail ballots, including claims Trump and his allies have made before — even as more Republican officials have tried to encourage voting by mail.

His claims notwithstanding, courts have repeatedly rejected allegations of widespread fraud tied to mail ballots, and many democracies around the world use them. And under the Constitution, he has no explicit authority over the “time, place and manner” of elections. Experts say that an executive order like the one Trump describes in his post would be immediately challenged in court and unlikely to take effect.

Beyond that, any major change to voting by mail before the 2026 midterms would be a logistical nightmare for election administrators, and it would disproportionately affect voters who rely on it most, including overseas service members, veterans, and people with disabilities.,

Here’s a fact check of some of the key claims in his post.

What Trump said:

“States are merely an ‘agent’ for the Federal Government in counting and tabulating the votes. They must do what the Federal Government, as represented by the President of the United States, tells them.”

Fact:

Trump’s claim that states are “merely an agent” of the federal government in elections is false, and contrary to decades of Republican orthodoxy on this point.

The Constitution gives power to Congress and the states — not the president — to the states to regulate the time, manner, and place of elections.

Meanwhile, Republicans for decades have framed states’ rights as a fundamental principle. This stretches back to Barry Goldwater in the 1960s, through Ronald Reagan’s emphasis on “federalism,” and into recent decades where GOP leaders have framed decentralization of power as protection against “big government.”

Voting has been a primary example for that very point.

For example, after the contentious 2000 presidential election, Republicans fiercely defended Florida’s right to set its own recount rules. GOP leaders and state attorneys general argued in the Supreme Court case Shelby County v. Holder (2013) that federal oversight of state election laws was unconstitutional. Over the last decade, Republicans in Congress have opposed Democratic efforts to pass federal voting-rights legislation like the For the People Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, arguing they represented “federal takeovers” of elections. Then-Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell in 2019 called the legislation “a one-size-fits-all partisan rewrite by one side here in Washington.”

In 2020, when Democrats proposed federal requirements to expand mail voting due to COVID-19, Republicans fought them off. And when Trump floated the idea of delaying the November election, Republican senators like McConnell, Lindsey Graham, and Marco Rubio reminded him that Congress and the states control election timing and procedures.

What Trump said:

“We are now the only Country in the World that uses Mail-In Voting. All others gave it up because of the MASSIVE VOTER FRAUD ENCOUNTERED”

Fact:

Many democracies use mail voting, including Germany, Switzerland, Canada, and Australia. Some use it more extensively than the U.S. No country has “given it up” because of widespread fraud. Fraud is rare in countries that use vote by mail, as it is here.

Germany has been using vote by mail since the 1950s; in its 2021 federal election, about half of German voters cast their ballots through the mail. In Switzerland, nearly all voters receive their ballots by mail, and more than 70% of voters return them in the same way. The United Kingdom allows any voters to request a mailed ballot, and about 20% of voters take advantage of the policy. The vast majority of European countries allow at least some form of mail voting, especially for citizens living abroad or for those with disabilities.

What Trump said:

Voting machines are “Highly ‘Inaccurate,’ Very Expensive, and Seriously Controversial” and “cost Ten Times more than accurate and sophisticated Watermark Paper, which is faster, and leaves NO DOUBT, at the end of the evening, as to who WON, and who LOST, the Election.”

Fact:

Paper ballots still have to be counted — either by hand (which is slow and error-prone) or by machine. That’s why nearly every state that uses paper ballots still relies on scanners to tally them quickly and accurately.

Existing federal law also requires the use of at least one voting machine in every single precinct in the country, for use by voters who have disabilities that make casting a paper ballot difficult. Trump cannot invalidate federal law through an executive order, so voting machines aren’t going anywhere.

Watermarks are not a standard or proven safeguard, though some states do have them (or something like them). The places that use them still use machines to count these ballots.

What Trump said:

“Democrats are virtually Unelectable without using this completely disproven Mail-In SCAM. ELECTIONS CAN NEVER BE HONEST WITH MAIL IN BALLOTS/VOTING, and everybody, IN PARTICULAR THE DEMOCRATS, KNOWS THIS.”

Fact:

There is no evidence that one party “cheats” with mail ballots. Voting by mail is used by Republicans and Democrats alike, and in jurisdictions led by Republicans and Democrats. In fact, Republican voters are often more likely to use mail voting, especially in states like Arizona and Florida, where Republicans championed the practice until recently. In fact, there’s no evidence that vote by mail benefits either party over the other — multiple academic studies have reached this conclusion.

What Trump said:

“ELECTIONS CAN NEVER BE HONEST WITH MAIL IN BALLOTS/VOTING.”

Fact:

Mail‑in voting has consistently been shown to operate extremely securely due to robust safeguards. In states like Pennsylvania, counties that offer ballot curing — the ability to correct errors like missing signatures — report significantly lower rejection rates, demonstrating that the system isn’t rigged, but rather is responsive and adaptable.

Votebeat’s coverage highlights what research studies have shown repeatedly: Instances of fraud in mail-in voting remain exceedingly rare. Even when ballots get rejected, that’s typically due to procedural mistakes — not attempts at manipulation or deceit. Election administrators across the country work under strict, bipartisan protocols, including signature checks and secure handling procedures, to protect integrity. Courts and election officials routinely affirm the reliability of mail ballots when these protocols are followed. In both routine practice and under close scrutiny, mail-in voting stands out as both secure and trustworthy.

What Trump said:

“I am going to lead a movement to get rid of MAIL-IN BALLOTS…by signing an EXECUTIVE ORDER to help bring HONESTY to the 2026 Midterm Elections.”

Fact:

Courts have ruled that Trump does not have the authority to unilaterally change federal election rules, as they consider several lawsuits challenging his March executive order.

In halting some provisions of that executive order, for example, a federal judge in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia wrote in April that “our Constitution entrusts Congress and the States — not the President — with the authority to regulate federal elections.” That ruling blocked Trump’s direction to the U.S. Election Assistance Commission to take steps to require voters to prove citizenship when registering to vote.

A federal judge in Massachusetts later blocked the same provision of the order, writing that Trump exceeded his authority. That judge also blocked parts of the order telling the U.S. Justice Department to enforce a ballot receipt deadline of Election Day.

Nothing stops Trump from leading an informal movement, however. He’s arguably been doing that for years already, and while it has had some impact on policy, voters haven’t really changed their habits much.

NOW READ: 'Past time anyone can consider Trump mentally sound': President's new claim ripped by critics

Jen Fifield contributed reporting.

Jessica Huseman is Votebeat’s editorial director and is based in Dallas. Contact Jessica at jhuseman@votebeat.org.

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization covering local election integrity and voting access. Sign up for their newsletters here.

Donald Trump’s second term is shaping up to be just as much about the past as the future. Not the past as it unfolded, but the version of events as he wants them remembered.

This article was originally published by Votebeat, a nonprofit news organization covering local election administration and voting access.

There are a few troubling examples of how the president and his allies are actively attempting to reshape public views of the 2020 election and the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection — and how these efforts are starting to affect real people and real institutions.

Take Oklahoma. Teachers there are now facing updated social studies standards that instruct students to “identify discrepancies in 2020 elections results” — not to examine election systems or to discuss voter confidence, but to presume that the election was flawed. This language is a quiet but profound distortion: It accepts Trump’s false narrative of fraud and requires educators to teach that falsehood as fact.

This illustrates the insidious consequences of partisan narratives hardening into policy. Oklahoma’s education chief, Ryan Walters, has aligned himself with efforts to eliminate so-called left-wing indoctrination in schools. But he’s supporting these new standards, which contradict the facts made plain in every credible post-election review, from Trump’s own first-term Department of Justice to GOP-led audits. Courts, including those with Trump-nominated judges, rejected dozens of spurious legal challenges, and officials in every state certified the results.

These facts have been sidelined in shaping what schoolchildren learn, which has long-term implications for public trust in elections.

Or consider the protests against aggressive immigration raids in Los Angeles. Trump has called the demonstrators there “insurrectionists” and is moving military forces into the city.

And what about the convicted insurrectionists who participated in the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol? Trump issued them pardons and commutations as one of the first acts of his second term, erasing the crimes and violence of that day — including threats to execute his vice president — from the historical record. (A plaque honoring law enforcement officials who defended the Capitol that day still hasn’t been installed, despite pleas to House Speaker Mike Johnson.)

Trump’s administration is also reportedly developing a plan to pardon the “fake electors” and other Trump allies charged or convicted in connection with attempts to overturn the election, as well as the plot to kidnap Michigan’s Democratic governor, as part of a broader effort to shield MAGA supporters from legal consequences, and perhaps convey the sense that these events never happened.

That is, the president is using both his immense influence and his constitutional authority to bend justice, public education, and public memory toward a false understanding of the past. And his allies are bending to his will.

What does this tell us about Trump’s capacity to reshape perceptions in the face of actual facts? And can anything stand in his way?

Some answers may come from a federal courtroom in Denver, where one of the more surreal chapters of the 2020 fallout is still playing out. That’s where the defamation trial against Trump ally and MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell — brought by former Dominion Voting Systems executive Eric Coomer — is underway.

Lindell, who has claimed that Dominion and Coomer were part of a scheme to steal the election from Trump, once promised that this trial would prove him right. But his lawyers seem to be arguing now that he’s so erratic, so impulsive, that nothing he says could be taken seriously enough to count as defamation.

“It’s just words,” said Lindell’s attorney, according to a Denver reporter covering the trial. “All Mike Lindell did was talk.”

That’s a hell of a defense, and itself a rewriting of history. The problem with it is that millions of people did believe Lindell, and still do.

Coomer may get to clear his name in the case against Lindell, but the broader effort to rewrite the past is gaining ground where it matters most: in classrooms, in Congress, and in the minds of voters. Juries and the judiciary can punish lies, but they can’t reach every classroom or undo every pardon.

With so many institutional guardrails already buckling under pressure, the remaining checks are public memory, a free press, and a willingness — from enough of us — to keep insisting on saying what actually happened.

Jessica Huseman is Votebeat’s editorial director and is based in Dallas. Contact Jessica at jhuseman@votebeat.org.

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization covering local election integrity and voting access. Sign up for their newsletters here.

Everyone’s talking about noncitizen voting as if it’s a big thing. Some prominent public officials will lead you to believe that there are such gaping holes in voter registration systems that they enable large numbers of noncitizens to vote and swing the results of elections, and that the issue deserves urgent attention.

This article was originally published by Votebeat, a nonprofit news organization covering local election administration and voting access.

“This will be one of the most important votes that members of this chamber will ever take in their entire careers,” House Speaker Mike Johnson said as he advocated for passage of the SAVE Act in Congress. “Should Americans and Americans alone determine the outcome of American elections? Or should we allow foreigners and illegal aliens to decide who sits in the White House and in the people’s House and in the Senate?”

These seem like good questions. But what about the tacit assumptions behind them? Are noncitizens actually casting ballots and deciding elections?

Researchers and election officials call the incidence of noncitizen voting “vanishingly rare” or “almost non-existent.” But those phrases can feel vague in the face of the political rhetoric that’s driving accelerating efforts to tighten voter registration.

By the numbers, there’s no evidence that suggests that noncitizens voting in U.S. elections is a widespread problem, or even a medium-sized one. Election officials, audits, and years of academic research all tell the same story: It’s rare, and understandably so, because risks are so high compared with the reward. Noncitizens who vote illegally are subject to criminal penalties, including prison time and loss of their residency status.

Lots of people have looked for noncitizens who’d be willing to take this risk for the sake of a vote. So far, they’ve found very few.

Take Ohio. The secretary of state’s office there last year flagged 621 noncitizens who might have voted — over a 10-year span. This was in a state with more than 8 million registered voters.

In Iowa, a 2024 review identified 35 noncitizens who had voted last year and 277 who were registered — out of nearly 2.3 million voters. These numbers were initially much higher based on incomplete state data, but once officials cross-checked them with federal immigration records, the numbers dropped sharply.

Georgia in 2024 found 20 noncitizens on its rolls after a statewide audit of more than 8 million voters. Nine had voted. All were referred for removal from the voter rolls and possible prosecution.

A recent review in Michigan found 15 potential noncitizen voters in last year’s presidential election, out of more than 5.7 million ballots cast.

So the numbers are small. But many Republicans say that even one vote cast by a noncitizen is too many. That’s why we’re still seeing legislation like the SAVE Act, which would require documentary proof of citizenship to register to vote — such as a certified copy of a birth certificate, a U.S. passport, or naturalization documents — rather than just an attestation under oath. For many Americans, such as those born in rural or non-hospital settings, these documents can be hard to find or expensive to replace.

President Donald Trump’s new executive order on elections also calls for requiring documentary proof of citizenship, though it has some important differences from the SAVE Act.

Trump, who lost the popular vote in 2016 and 2020, has long claimed that voting by noncitizens sways election results. He and allies have based many of their assertions on a 2014 analysis by political scientists Jesse Richman and colleagues that claimed 6.4% of ballots were cast by noncitizens in the 2008 election, when Barack Obama swamped John McCain by more than 9 million votes. That analysis has been widely denounced as a flawed interpretation of earlier survey results. The researchers behind the original survey, the Cooperative Congressional Election Study have since said their data was never meant to support those conclusions.

That didn’t stop Kansas from using the Richman study as the backbone of its defense in a 2018 federal trial over the state’s proof-of-citizenship law. It didn’t go well. The judge, appointed by George W. Bush, called Richman’s testimony “confusing, inconsistent and methodologically flawed” and tossed it aside.

Meanwhile, the court found that the law had stopped more than 31,000 eligible Kansans from registering — many of them young voters — while identifying just 39 noncitizens who had registered over two decades. Most of those registrations were due not to fraud but administrative errors. The court struck down the law.

The SAVE Act would revive this approach at the federal level, and then leave big parts of the implementation to the states. They’d decide what to do if, say, the name on a voter’s ID doesn’t match his or her birth name. Some states might go all in with strict requirements, while others take a lighter touch. That leaves infinite room for inconsistency, confusion and disenfranchisement — all to solve a problem that (see above) is pretty small.

Two former Republican secretaries of state, John Merrill (Alabama) and Trey Grayson (Kentucky), recently wrote an op-ed for Bloomberg in which they say Trump’s executive order could create unintended consequences, citing Kansas’ experience with impeding eligible voters as an example.

Those interested in “getting the citizenship issue right can look to the states for promising pathways forward,” they say, such as proposed legislation that would allow election officials to more easily check voters’ citizenship status.

But if the idea is to seek a solution based on data rather than rhetoric, the horse may have left the barn.

Fortunately, the two officials wrote, noncitizen voting is historically rare. “Yet those in charge of administering elections must contend with the fact that a critical mass of the voting public harbors serious concerns about election integrity in general, and noncitizen voting in particular.”

Jessica Huseman is Votebeat’s editorial director and is based in Dallas. Contact Jessica at jhuseman@votebeat.org.

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization covering local election integrity and voting access. Sign up for their newsletters here.

President Trump issued a presidential memorandum Wednesday demanding an investigation by the Justice and Homeland Security departments into his former top cybersecurity official, escalating a campaign of retribution aimed at those who contradicted his false claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him.

This article was originally published by Votebeat, a nonprofit news organization covering local election administration and voting access.

The memo directly names Christopher Krebs, former Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency director; a second memo named Miles Taylor, a former Homeland Security official during Trump’s first term. Trump’s move shocked many who work in elections. While some current and former officials brushed off the order as political theater, others are taking it far more seriously — for example, hiring an attorney, scrubbing social media, and warning their spouse.

The range of reactions reflects both the extraordinary nature of Trump’s use of executive authority to target individuals and a deep uncertainty about how far it might go.

Trump has repeatedly made clear he has no intention of letting go of his allegations over the 2020 election. Election officials across the country said this week’s actions are an attempt to punish those who, like Krebs, defended the integrity of the vote.

Krebs was the first director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, created under the Trump administration, and he was nominated by Trump himself. During the 2020 election, as Trump and his allies pushed baseless claims of widespread fraud, CISA launched a rumor control site to debunk falsehoods about voting systems. After the election, both the agency and Krebs publicly affirmed the security of the vote — statements that drew Trump’s ire. He ultimately fired Krebs via tweet.

“I think [Krebs] said this is the safest election we’ve ever had, and yet, every day you read in the papers about more and more fraud that’s discovered,” Trump asserted without evidence in the Oval Office as he signed the memo Wednesday. “He’s the fraud. He’s a disgrace. So, we’ll find out whether or not it was a safe election, and if it wasn’t, he’s got a big price to pay, and he’s a bad guy.”

Krebs did not respond to Votebeat’s request for an interview. On Wednesday night, he reupped on X — formerly Twitter — a post from November 2020. “Honored to serve. We did it right. Defend Today, Secure Tomrorow [sic]. #Protect2020,” it read.

Ann Jacobs, a Democrat and the chair of the Wisconsin Elections Commission, expressed outrage over Trump’s targeting of Krebs. “The 2020 election was neither stolen nor rigged,” she said. “It is shocking that the current administration cannot admit this, and instead has targeted people who have declared this obvious truth.”

In addition to revoking Krebs’ security clearance, the memorandum revokes the security clearances of any employee of Krebs’ security firm, SentinelOne. In a statement, the company said that it would “actively cooperate in any review of security clearances held by any of our personnel,” which includes fewer than 10 employees. The company said it does not expect this to “materially impact our business in any way.”

President Trump’s memorandum directs the attorney general and Homeland Security secretary to conduct a full review of Krebs’ activities during his time as a government employee, including any potential dissemination of classified information, and a “comprehensive evaluation” of CISA’s activities over the past six years. In an unusual move, it also instructs DHS and the attorney general to issue a joint report with recommendations.

David Becker, a longtime elections attorney who formerly worked for the Justice Department and executive director of the nonpartisan Center for Election Innovation & Research, said the president’s request itself illustrates the weakness of the allegations over the 2020 election.

“As we sit here four and a half years after the election, there has still not been one single shred of evidence introduced in any court that would suggest the 2020 election was stolen. You can understand why the president would not want his claims to be vetted in court,” he said, adding that the election has withstood “more scrutiny than any election in American history.”

In addition to the memos targeting Krebs and Taylor, Trump this week issued the latest in a series of executive orders targeting law firms, this time naming Susman Godfrey, the law firm that represented Dominion Voting Systems in its successful defamation cases. Fox News settled the case in 2023 for a staggering $787 million, one of the largest known media defamation settlements in U.S. history.

The move came on the same day a Delaware judge again ruled that conservative outlet Newsmax aired false and defamatory claims about Dominion — a case in which Susman is leading Dominion’s legal team.

“Anyone who knows Susman Godfrey knows we believe in the rule of law, and we take seriously our duty to uphold it. This principle guides us now. There is no question that we will fight this unconstitutional order,” the firm said in a statement. Justin Nelson, the attorney managing Dominion’s cases, declined further comment.

State and local election officials watched the executive actions with a mix of exasperation and fear. Combined with last month’s executive order on elections — already the subject of multiple lawsuits — the latest moves have deepened concerns about the growing use of presidential power to target individuals for defending the democratic process.

Many were reluctant to speak on the record out of concern for making themselves targets of Trump’s ire, but said the actions feel less like policy and more like personal retaliation, fueling an increasingly hostile environment for election officials. Some described the orders as not just disruptive but dangerous — eroding trust in nonpartisan institutions and chilling the work of public servants already under threat.

The uncertainty around how the orders will be enforced, what precedent they set, and what other election-related directives Trump may issue has heightened alarm for some. Votebeat has granted some people anonymity to speak about the memorandum because of concerns about retribution. “I’m terrified, honestly,” said one official, who has spoken with legal counsel.

Aaron Thacker, a spokesperson for Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes, a Democrat, said there is “a heightened sense of anxiety, about who is next, or what is next.”

“This is a form of retribution,” he said.

One former election official in a swing state who was targeted by Trump after the 2020 election said seeing the executive order on Krebs triggered immediate anxiety. That person reached out to an official in another state to share their concerns about what might come next. A reminder that they hadn’t done anything wrong helped calm them down — at least for now.

Others are less fazed.

“I’m not hiring a lawyer,” said one swing state election official. “I’m making some soup.”

Jessica Huseman is Votebeat’s editorial director and is based in Dallas. Contact Jessica at jhuseman@votebeat.org.

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization covering local election integrity and voting access. Sign up for their newsletters here.

President Donald Trump’s new executive order on regulating elections is striking for the way it asserts broad powers for the executive branch that go far beyond what’s prescribed in the Constitution or sanctioned by courts. Experts expect the order to face legal challenges for that reason.

This article was originally published by Votebeat, a nonprofit news organization covering local election administration and voting access.

But what’s also striking about the order is how it seeks to dictate some arcane details of the way voting systems work in some of America: Specifically, it bans the machine-readable barcodes or QR codes that are sometimes printed on ballots to help speed up vote counting.

Trump framed this move as a return to secure, paper-based voting. But in reality, the vast majority of Americans already use paper-based systems to vote, and barcodes and QR codes are an integral part of some of those systems. Getting rid of them as quickly as Trump envisions could create confusion, hassles, and steep costs for the jurisdictions that use them, which include some of America’s largest cities. It would slow down vote counts, and wouldn’t necessarily improve their accuracy.

So the language of the Trump order naturally raises questions about how barcodes and QR codes are used in our voting systems, and why the administration is directly targeting these codes as an urgent threat to election security and integrity.

Here’s a closer look at some of those questions:

How are barcodes and QR codes used on ballots?

A fairly typical voting system that’s widely accepted in U.S. elections involves hand-marked paper ballots. Voters check or fill in boxes for their choices, or write them in, and then insert the completed ballot into a machine that reads the selections and tabulates the results.

Some counties in recent years have adopted a different system. In these jurisdictions, including some of the largest metropolitan counties in America, voters use a computer with a touchscreen display to make their selections. Once they’re finished, the computer prints out a completed paper ballot that includes both a human-readable summary of their selections and a barcode or QR code that encodes the same information. Voters have a chance to review the printed ballot before inserting it into a tabulation machine for counting. The machine reads the coded selections, while leaving a paper record that can be double-checked by a human later.

Not all machine-printed ballot systems rely solely on the codes. In many cases, the tabulators can read the marked bubbles or text selections, as with the hand-marked ballot systems. But counties that use barcode-based systems say they allow for faster, more efficient counting without sacrificing accuracy.

What did Trump’s executive order say about QR codes on ballots?

While the Constitution gives state legislatures and Congress the power to determine how elections are run, Trump is aiming to regulate them in part through the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, an agency that helps develop guidelines for states and local governments to ensure that their voting systems are secure and accurate, and oversees certification of new systems.

Trump’s order directs the EAC to amend the federal Voluntary Voting System Guidelines to say that voting systems are not allowed to use QR codes or barcodes in the counting of votes, except when necessary to accommodate voters with disabilities.

Trump’s order gives the EAC 180 days to review and potentially recertify voting systems under these updated standards, and rescind certifications based on previous guidelines.

The VVSG sets minimum standards for how election systems should operate. Although they’re officially voluntary, most states use them as benchmarks when choosing election equipment, and many states have laws requiring new voting equipment to meet current VVSG standards, effectively making compliance mandatory at the state or local level.

On Thursday, a coalition of civil rights groups released a letter to the EAC saying it would be illegal for the agency to take action in response to Trump’s executive order. The president “has no authority to direct the Commission” to modify the VVSG, the groups wrote, adding that any such changes must follow the timelines and processes set in federal law.

What is Trump’s concern with systems that use barcodes and QR codes?

The concern involves the demand for voter-verifiable paper records, a system that blends paper ballots with machine verification and tabulation for accessibility, efficiency, and security. Election security experts consider this the gold standard because it ensures that voters can check their selections before casting their ballot, and it creates a physical record that can be used for an audit or recount later if needed. Nearly all U.S. states have transitioned to these types of voting systems, including some that rely on barcodes or QR codes. (Louisiana and some parts of Texas still use electronic systems that produce no paper records.)

Trump’s executive order affirms support for voter-verifiable paper records as the nationwide standard. But his opposition to barcodes responds to the concerns of critics and some election security experts who say barcode-based systems don’t produce voter-verifiable paper records, because what the machine tabulates is based on a code, not the selections that humans can read. The voter can’t truly verify what the machine is reading.

The QR code could theoretically be inaccurate, or manipulated to misrepresent votes, without the voter’s knowledge, these critics argue.

This debate isn’t new. Colorado’s Secretary of State Jena Griswold said in 2019 that the state would eliminate QR codes from ballots as a proactive step to avoid any vulnerability. And former Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein fought, unsuccessfully, to have this type of voting machine decertified in Pennsylvania on these grounds.

Georgia passed legislation last year requiring QR codes to be removed from ballots by 2026.

Have there been inaccuracies involving ballots with QR codes in past elections?

One notable case is from Northampton County, Pennsylvania, in 2023, where the choices represented by the machine-generated code differed from the selections that appeared on the human-readable printout. But in this case, county officials said, it was the code that accurately reflected the voter’s choices. A programming error had caused the text version to incorrectly display voters’ choices in a judicial retention race. But the votes were tabulated correctly based on the code.

Barcodes or no barcodes, every state but Alabama requires post-election audits to ensure the accuracy of results.

Which states or counties will be most affected by this order? What would banning QR codes on ballots mean for them?

According to Verified Voting, an organization focused on election technology, there are 1,954 counties spread across 40 states that use voting machines that print QR or barcodes. Some have only a small number for use only by voters with disabilities (and would therefore not have to get rid of them), while other jurisdictions use them for all voters.

Among the users are some very large jurisdictions, including Los Angeles, Philadelphia, and Dallas. The executive order would require those jurisdictions to replace or update all of their machines on a short timetable, costing potentially millions of dollars.

In debates leading up to Georgia’s ban, the costs associated with eliminating QR codes were estimated at up to $66 million for new equipment and software updates.

Portage County, a 70,000-person county in central Wisconsin, just spent $750,000 to switch to ExpressVote machines, which print voters’ choices on a paper ballot and encodes them in machine-readable barcodes — the type of voting machines that may be disallowed under this order.

What’s currently allowed under the Voluntary Voting System Guidelines?

The most updated guidelines, VVSG 2.0, were passed in 2021. No voting systems designed to these standards are yet on the market, but the agency has three systems currently in its certification process.

The VVSG 2.0 guidelines require a voter-verifiable paper trail, according to Kristen Muthig, the EAC’s director of communications. Barcodes are allowed if they “include human-readable representations of the ballot for a voter or auditor to verify,” Muthig told Votebeat. This means codes can be used to speed up machine tabulation, but they cannot be the sole record of a voter’s choices — there must also be printed text that clearly reflects those choices.

How would this change affect voting?

Counties using barcode-assisted systems would need to replace expensive equipment, retrain poll workers, and educate voters, all under tight timelines ahead of the November election. That could cause disruptions and confusion during the initial implementation phases.

Moreover, the removal of QR codes could affect the speed and efficiency of vote tabulation, as optical scanning systems can process QR codes more quickly and accurately than human-readable text.

Jessica Huseman is Votebeat’s editorial director and is based in Dallas. Contact Jessica at jhuseman@votebeat.org.

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization covering local election integrity and voting access. Sign up for their newsletters here.

President Donald Trump issued a sweeping executive order Tuesday that would dramatically change the administration of U.S. elections, including requiring people to prove their citizenship when registering to vote, but experts and voting rights advocates said they expect the order to face quick legal challenges.

This article was originally published by Votebeat, a nonprofit news organization covering local election administration and voting access.

The order, titled “Preserving and Protecting the Integrity of American Elections,” also would change the certification standards for voting systems, potentially forcing states to rapidly replace millions of dollars in voting equipment, and it would prohibit the counting of ballots postmarked by Election Day but received afterwards, which 18 states and Washington, D.C., currently permit.

Voting rights advocates and legal experts said the bulk of the executive order will certainly be challenged in court, as the Constitution grants authority over elections to states and to Congress, not the president. Should it take effect, they say, millions of voters could be disenfranchised.

Danielle Lang, senior director of voting rights at the Campaign Legal Center, said: “There are many moving parts here, but the short answer is that none of this is within the province of the president, and I would expect that he’ll be met with legal challenges.”

Rick Hasen, a professor at UCLA Law School and expert on election law, told Votebeat he expects litigation over the issue to be filed immediately.

Hasen said the order assumes that the White House has more power over independent agencies — in this case the U.S. Election Assistance Commission — than was previously understood. “It was thought to be that he has no power over the Election Assistance Commission,” he said. “This would be quite the sea change.”

While much of the order may ultimately be unenforceable, he said, it offers insight into Trump’s election priorities: “It’s a messaging document even if it’s not successful.”

Trump and his allies have made repeated claims of voter fraud, especially involving the 2020 election, and suggested that it is widespread enough to affect the outcome of elections, even though audits, recounts, and the courts have consistently found no evidence of significant problems. While signing the executive order Tuesday, Trump said that “this country is so sick because of the elections, the fake elections, and the bad elections, and we’re going to straighten it out one way or the other.” He also promised his administration would take “other steps” on elections in the coming weeks.

Trump’s executive order directs federal agencies in some instances to withhold federal funds from states that are unwilling to comply, or share information with federal agencies as laid out in his order. It’s unclear how effective a cudgel that will be. States have long complained that Congress allocates little money for elections, and much of it has long since been spent. In its most recent spending legislation, Congress allocated $15 million in grants that must be divided among the 50 states and U.S. territories.

“I would love for there to be more of a pool of money at jeopardy here,” said Justin Levitt, a professor at Loyola Law School in California, who was a civil-rights official in the U.S. Justice Department and a former adviser on voting rights to the Biden administration.

“‘Would you like me to take away a penny?’ That’s what he’s essentially saying to states,” he added wryly.

Many officials were still assessing the ramifications of the executive order Tuesday, though it drew quick praise from Trump’s supporters and some Republican secretaries of state, including Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, who lauded the citizenship documentation requirement. Some provisions, such as directing the Justice Department to prioritize enforcement of laws against voting by noncitizens, fall within a more traditional view of presidential power.

But some Democratic secretaries of state said they were considering asking the courts to intervene. In Michigan, the Secretary of State’s Office did not respond to requests for comment Tuesday afternoon, but Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson wrote a post about the order from her personal social media account and tagged state Attorney General Dana Nessel.

“If the election denier-in-chief tries to interfere with any citizen’s right to vote, we’ll see him in court,” wrote Benson, who is running for governor. Nessel’s office said it was reviewing the order.

Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes said that he and state Attorney General Kris Mayes are already discussing whether to sue over what he described as “an attempt to federalize elections.” He also called the order “a massive unfunded mandate.”

Fontes said he believes the intent of the order is to make it look as though something improper occurred in the conduct of the election, so you can justify “canceling the election later.”

“It’s very methodical, and very, very dangerous,” he said in an interview with Votebeat Tuesday. “You have to pay attention not to what the executive order says, but what the end game may be. I believe the end game may be that Donald Trump wants to stay in office in perpetuity.”

Push for proof-of-citizenship laws accelerates

Trump and other Republicans have long been calling for requiring proof of citizenship when people register to vote, which they have portrayed as a necessary check against the threat of voting by noncitizens.

Noncitizen voting is already illegal and carries harsh legal penalties — including prison time and loss of residency status — and audits and investigations have found it to be extremely rare. People who register must already attest to their citizenship under penalty of perjury.

Nonetheless, Republicans have accelerated their push for federal and state-level legislation to require proof of citizenship for new registrants, and in some cases, already-registered voters.

As early as next week, the GOP-controlled U.S. House could consider a bill, known as the SAVE Act, to require documented proof of citizenship. Multiple states have passed such legislation, and others, including Michigan and Texas, are considering it. Arizona already requires documentation of citizenship to vote in state and local elections, but after a legal fight that went to the U.S. Supreme Court years ago, must permit voters without such proof to vote in federal elections.

Congress has considered imposing this type of requirement before, but so far, it hasn’t adopted it.

Trump’s executive order would circumvent Congress to require documented proof of citizenship by ordering the U.S. Election Assistance Commission to update a national mail voter registration form that most states are required to accept under the National Voter Registration Act.

Levitt said courts might be reluctant to let the president give the EAC such powers while Congress is considering legislating similar actions under its own authority.

And there are other considerations. Six states are exempt from the NVRA, including Wisconsin, where, in 2023 a conservative Waukesha County judge blocked election officials from using the federal form.

“Under the Constitution, states are, in fact, tasked with the administration of elections,” said Ann Jacobs, the Wisconsin Elections Commission’s Democratic chair. “So you’d have a conflict between a federal law and a state judge.”

In addition, voting rights advocates have said millions of Americans do not have ready access to documentation that would meet the requirements, or the ability to show it to election officials in person. In Michigan, for example, many local clerks work only part-time, which means it can be hard for a voter to go in person to show documentary proof of citizenship.

“This would impact Michigan’s rural voters tremendously,” said Barb Byrum, the clerk in Ingham County, Michigan.

Byrum said she thought such a requirement could be the end of online voter registration. And automatic registration, which Michigan residents use when they get a drivers license or state ID, “appears to be essentially nullified,” said Michael Siegrist, the clerk in Canton Township, Michigan, a Detroit suburb.

This could increase the workload for local election officials, which has already grown in recent years because of what Siegrist called a “gross misunderstanding of how secure our voter rolls are.”

“What I find most concerning about all of it is that there are some points where it’s a regurgitation of election conspiracies, whether it’s this false notion that non-citizens are voting or election systems are attached to the internet,” he told Votebeat by text message.

More instructions for the EAC on voting machines

Donald Palmer, chair of the EAC, said the agency is reviewing Trump’s order “and determining the next steps in enhancing the integrity of voter registration and state and federal elections.”

“We also anticipate consulting with state and local election officials,” he said in a statement.

State and local officials deal with the EAC on a largely voluntary basis. The agency oversees the minimum standards used to test and certify voting machines — Voluntary Voting System Guidelines — which many states have adopted.

The order requires the EAC to update the guidelines to disallow the use of QR codes or similar barcodes that get printed on ballots produced by voting machines, and to require the use of voter-verifiable paper records. Within 180 days, the order says, the EAC must review and potentially recertify voting systems under these updated standards, rescinding certifications based on previous guidelines.

VVSG standards were updated just last year to require paper records, but they currently do not ban QR codes. The executive order encourages all states to use machines compliant with the new standards, and directs both the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the Federal Emergency Management Agency to “heavily prioritize” allocating funding to local and state agencies whose systems are compliant.

While the new standards have been approved, there are currently no voting machines on the market that have been certified to these standards. So no jurisdiction in the country currently uses such systems — nor could they begin to within 180 days, because none are available for purchase.

Levitt said the president does not have the authority to direct the EAC to update guidelines that were previously passed by the independent agency. “He’s presenting this as an order I don’t think they have to pay attention to,” he said.

Many jurisdictions — including some in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, and the entire state of Georgia — use systems that record votes as a barcode printed on the ballot, along with a written record of the voters’ selections. Some critics of this process have argued that since the machine actually records votes via the barcode and not the written text, and since humans cannot read barcodes or QR codes, systems like this do not actually produce voter-verifiable records.

This became an issue in Northampton County, Pennsylvania, in 2023, when a programming error caused the written portion of the results to incorrectly display voter’s choices in a judicial retention race, but county officials said the barcodes recorded the selections accurately.

Order says late-arriving ballots can’t be counted

The executive order also asserts that federal law does not allow mail and absentee ballots to be counted if they arrive after polls close on Election Day. It relies on the same logic as a ruling from the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which recently invalidated a Mississippi statute that allowed counting ballots that arrived up to five days after the election. The ruling has been criticized by legal experts, and similar litigation is working its way through federal courts in California.

Eighteen states, plus Washington D.C., Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands, allow ballots that are received in the days after the election to be counted, as long as they are postmarked on or before Election Day. The number of days varies by state. Utah — which Trump carried by more than 20 points — counts ballots received up to the day the vote is canvassed, which may be more than a week after Election Day.

Most likely to be impacted by a change in the rules are military voters, who are given leeway in several states if their ballots arrive late. In Michigan, for example, voters amended the state Constitution in 2018 to allow military and overseas voters six extra days to get their ballots in as long as those ballots are postmarked by Election Day. Trump’s order allows no exception for military ballots, and would throw the Michigan law into doubt, said Byrum, the clerk in Ingham County.

DOGE gets power to inspect voter rolls

The executive order envisions a new role for federal agencies in scrutinizing the voter rolls maintained by states and municipalities. It allows the Department of Government Efficiency, the newly created arm of government led by billionaire Trump backer Elon Musk, and the Department of Homeland Security to view publicly available voter files and other unspecified “available records” to ensure the rolls are being cleaned to federal standards.

Trump attempted something similar when he established his Presidential Commission on Election Integrity in 2017, shortly after he took office in his first term. Delbert Hosemann, then the Republican secretary of state in Mississippi, said at the time that the commission could “jump into the Gulf of Mexico” before he would comply with the request for records.

“Trump has more control over the party than he had before,” said Hasen. “Now, of course, [Hosemann] couldn’t call it the ‘Gulf of Mexico.’”

Levitt said he does not anticipate as much Republican pushback either. But he said he does not believe states are OK with “giving Elon the voter rolls and having him tell us what to do with them.”

DOGE is already facing multiple lawsuits about data privacy as it prods other areas of the government for purported waste. Levitts said he expects the same here. Every complaint in those lawsuits, he said, “applies on steroids to DOGE deciding to amass a national voter file, which is essentially what this is.”

Jessica Huseman is Votebeat’s editorial director and is based in Dallas. Contact Jessica at jhuseman@votebeat.org.

Carrie Levine is Votebeat’s interim editor-in-chief and is based in Washington, D.C. She edits and frequently writes Votebeat’s national newsletter. Contact Carrie at clevine@votebeat.org.

Jen Fifield is a reporter for Votebeat based in Arizona. Contact Jen at jfifield@votebeat.org.

Carter Walker is a reporter for Votebeat in partnership with Spotlight PA. Contact Carter at cwalker@votebeat.org.

Alexander Shur is a reporter for Votebeat based in Wisconsin. Contact Alexander at ashur@votebeat.org.

Hayley Harding is a reporter for Votebeat based in Michigan. Contact Hayley at hharding@votebeat.org.

Natalia Contreras is a reporter for Votebeat in partnership with the Texas Tribune. Contact Natalia at ncontreras@votebeat.org.

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization covering local election integrity and voting access. Sign up for their newsletters here.

President Donald Trump recently repeated his calls for exclusively using paper ballots, lauding them before the first cabinet meeting of his second term. For the sake of honest elections, he said, “We have to go back to paper ballots.”

This article was originally published by Votebeat, a nonprofit news organization covering local election administration and voting access.

In reality, the overwhelming majority of the country already uses paper ballots.

Most states use one of two methods: either voters hand-mark a paper ballot that is then read by a machine, or they use a ballot-marking device that prints a summary of their choices on a sheet of paper for verification before it’s fed into a tabulator.

Both are examples of a voter-verified paper trail, a system that blends paper ballots with machine verification and tabulation for accessibility, efficiency, and security.

Election security experts overwhelmingly consider this the gold standard because it ensures that voters can check their selections before casting their ballot, and it creates a physical record that can be used for an audit or recount later if needed.

Using paper ballots, in other words, does not necessarily mean eliminating the use of electronic voting equipment and hand-counting election results. It means doing things the way they are normally done, and ensuring that there’s a paper trail to check for errors.

Estimates vary, but according to Verified Voting more than 95% of U.S. voters already cast their ballots on paper. Before the November presidential election, the Brennan Center for Justice estimated that around 98% of votes cast in that election would be cast on paper, more than four years ago.

The only state that does not use paper ballots statewide? Louisiana — a Republican stronghold that has consistently supported Trump in past elections.

Meanwhile, a handful of counties in states like Texas, Mississippi, Tennessee, and Indiana still use electronic voting machines that lack a voter-verified paper trail. These counties tend to be rural and lack the funds to replace their voting systems. Trump has not proposed any federal funding to support such a transition, leaving these localities without a clear path to comply with his vision.

So what does Trump mean by his call to “go back” to paper ballots? And how far back into the paper era does he really want to go?

Some of his allies appear to believe he means getting rid of all electronic equipment used to mark or count ballots, and that’s what they’re pushing for.

“We will not stop until we have paper ballots counted, and we’re going to melt down all the voting machines and turn them into prison bars,” MyPillow CEO and ardent Trump backer Mike Lindell told ABC News after he was held in contempt of court this month while fighting a defamation case over his false claims about Smartmatic voting machines.

This month, a Georgia state senator proposed a bill that would eliminate voting machines entirely, requiring that ballots be both hand-marked and hand-counted.

“I know many of you listen to everything that President Trump says, and you may have noticed a week or two ago, President Trump asked for paper ballots,” Republican Colton Moore told fellow senators, “and I have a piece of legislation that accomplishes that very thing.

Lindell’s pledge and Moore’s legislation highlight the risks of misunderstanding the system we currently have, or interpreting Trump’s wishes for paper ballots so literally as to mean eliminating scanners entirely in favor of hand counting. I won’t dive into the details here, but Votebeat has repeatedly reported on why hand counting is inefficient, not secure, inaccurate, and extremely costly. It’s fair to wonder whether anyone who advocates such a switch is more interested in creating suspicion about our election system than in improving it.

What a real advocate for election integrity wants is a way for voters to be sure that they are casting the votes they intend to cast, and for election officials to be able to verify that those votes were correctly counted. Those goals are already achieved through the vast majority of existing systems.

There can be political debates about ballot access, election funding, and the infrastructure needed to support secure and efficient voting.

But before we go melting down our voting machines, it’s important to ground this discussion about how we vote in facts. Paper ballots are not a partisan issue. They are a standard election security measure that the country has largely adopted.

Jessica Huseman is Votebeat’s editorial director and is based in Dallas. Contact Jessica at jhuseman@votebeat.org.

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization covering local election integrity and voting access. Sign up for their newsletters here.

Donald Trump will be sworn in as president again Monday at the U.S. Capitol. One of his first acts as president, he has said, will be to pardon his supporters who participated in the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the very same building.

This article was originally published by Votebeat, a nonprofit news organization covering local election administration and voting access.

It’s the next step in his efforts to rewrite the history of that day — which he has described as “day of love” — and obscure his actions to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. His efforts will now be bolstered as he reassumes the powers of the presidency.

Trump has been vague, though, about which defendants he’s willing to pardon. Around 1,600 people have been prosecuted for their roles that day on criminal charges ranging from unlawful entry to assaulting police officers.

His soon-to-be vice president, J.D. Vance, created more uncertainty this week when he said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that those responsible for violence that day “obviously” should not be pardoned. Vance’s remarks provoked a backlash from Trump supporters, and he muddied the waters even more with his response.

During her Senate confirmation hearings on Jan. 15, Pam Bondi, Trump’s attorney general nominee, was asked about the prospect of pardons for people convicted or charged with violent acts, and she provided no more clarity than Vance. “I’m not going to speak for the president,” she said, referring to Trump, but he “does not like people who abuse police officers either.”

Whatever Trump decides to do about the Jan. 6 rioters, there are some ongoing cases related to attempts to overturn the 2020 election that he can’t do much about: the state-level prosecutions of his supporters who participated in the so-called fake elector scheme.

This involves the Trump electors in some states that Joe Biden won in 2020, who nonetheless created and signed false electoral certificates for Trump and tried to submit those certificates to Congress in what prosecutors have described as an attempt to overturn the results.

Only a handful of cases are still ongoing. Not all of the seven states where the Trump campaign assembled slates of fake electors pursued charges. In Pennsylvania, the electors in the scheme added an important legal caveat to their document that warded off criminal repercussions. In other states, some of those charged have pleaded guilty, or have had charges dropped in exchange for cooperation.

Elsewhere, prosecutors are signaling they will continue to move ahead.

In Arizona, state Attorney General Kris Mayes, a Democrat, has said repeatedly that Trump’s election won’t affect her case. Her office charged 18 Trump allies for their roles in the scheme. Some have taken plea deals, and the rest are expected to go to trial in January 2026. This week, she asked the Justice Department to release Special Counsel Jack Smith’s files related to Trump’s alleged election subversion plot in an effort to get any information related to these cases.

“Today, my office has one of the only remaining cases that includes charges against national actors,” Mayes wrote to U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland. “Undoubtedly, disclosing Special Counsel’s file to my office will help ensure that those who should be held accountable are.”

In Nevada, state Attorney General Aaron Ford, a Democrat, refiled charges against the six Republican fake electors there after a federal judge dismissed the case earlier over issues related to venue. Each of the six has been charged with one count of alleged forgery, and all have denied wrongdoing.

In Georgia, the fallout continues from Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis’s personal scandal. In December, a state appeals court disqualified her from overseeing the cases related to efforts to overturn the 2020 election. She’s appealing that decision, and the outlook for the cases is unclear.

In Wisconsin, three people have been charged with 11 counts related to forgery. Ten of those charges were filed last month. The three men — including Kenneth Chesebro, a Wisconsin native reportedly among the lead architects of the fake elector scheme — previously settled a civil case filed by a progressive law firm over the same issue, agreeing never to serve as electors again.

In Michigan, Attorney General Dana Nessel charged 16 people in the summer of 2023. Since then, one has had his charges dropped in exchange for cooperation. Defendants have not yet convinced the judge to drop the charges, and Nessel, a Democrat, has said Trump’s reelection will not impact their continued prosecution. Nessel also asked the DOJ to share its case files in its now defunct case against Trump last week.

Trump himself appears to be out of legal jeopardy.

This week, the Justice Department released Smith’s report on his investigation into Trump’s efforts to overturn the election. In it, the special counsel wrote that Trump made claims of election fraud that were “knowingly false” and said the evidence assembled against him would have been sufficient for a conviction.

But Justice Department policy barring criminal cases against sitting presidents required that the charges against Trump be dropped when he won the November election.

Among the spoils of winning the presidency, after all, is the power to put your own stamp on history.

Jessica Huseman is Votebeat’s editorial director and is based in Dallas. Contact Jessica at jhuseman@votebeat.org.

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization covering local election integrity and voting access. Sign up for their newsletters here.