Executive Control of Federal Elections (2026)
A sustained 2026 effort by the executive branch to assert federal control over the administration of federal elections — an authority the Constitution's Elections Clause (Art. I, Sec. 4) assigns to the states, with Congress empowered to override, and not to the president. The campaign runs from Executive Order 14399 (March 31, 2026), which directed the Postal Service to deliver mail ballots only to voters on federally compiled lists, through the litigation over that order and the Postal Service's own implementing rulemaking. Each entry is one facet of the same compound effort; this episode should absorb future entries — final rules, court rulings, and enforcement actions — as they arrive.
Documented in this episode (2)
Trump signs second federal-elections executive order asserting presidential control over voter eligibility and mail voting
On March 31, 2026, President Donald Trump signed Executive Order 14399, "Ensuring Citizenship Verification and Integrity in Federal Elections," directing the Department of Homeland Security and Social Security Administration to compile federal "citizenship verification" lists and instructing the U.S. Postal Service to deliver mail ballots only to voters on those lists. Constitutional law experts, federal courts, and 24 state attorneys general have stated that the president has no authority under the Elections Clause (Art. I, Sec. 4) to set federal voting procedures — a position that already produced a 2025 injunction against substantial portions of Trump's first elections executive order.
U.S. Postal Service proposes rule requiring states to submit mail-ballot voter lists, implementing Trump's elections executive order
On May 29, 2026, the U.S. Postal Service issued a notice of proposed rulemaking (published in the Federal Register June 2) that would require state election officials to submit the names and ballot barcodes of voters who request mail-in or absentee ballots to a new federal "Federal Ballot Mail Portal," and would direct USPS to deliver ballots only to voters on the resulting lists. The rulemaking implements President Trump's March 31 executive order (EO 14399) asserting federal control over mail voting — authority the Constitution's Elections Clause reserves to the states and to Congress, not the president. The proposal is not final and faces legal challenge; the act recorded here is the executive directing a federal agency to claim that authority, not the (contingent) disenfranchisement that would follow if it takes effect.