WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump signed an executive order Tuesday intended to make it harder to cast mail-in ballots, escalating his long-running campaign against a practice used by millions of Americans.

The order seeks to ensure that state election officials have lists of eligible voters, according to White House staff secretary Will Scharf, and it directs the Postmaster General to take steps to verify that ballots are being sent to and returned by those voters.

Trump’s unilateral action comes as the election bill he’s lobbied for — the SAVE America Act — has stalled in the Senate amid the threat of a Democratic filibuster. Trump has urged Republicans to do away with the century-old filibuster rule requiring a supermajority to end debate on the bill, but enough Republicans have resisted the move.

“We’d like to have voter ID, we’d like to have proof of citizenship, and that’ll be another subject for another time. We’re working on that,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office.

Elections officials in Oregon and Arizona immediately promised to challenge the executive order in court, according to the Associated Press. But Trump downplayed the threat of legal action, saying: “I believe it’s foolproof, and maybe it’ll be tested. Maybe it won’t.”

The use of mail-in ballots was a central component of widely debunked claims by the president of systemic fraud in the 2020 election, culminating in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. Trump has sought to turn back pandemic-era rules by some states that allowed election officials to automatically send ballots of absentee voters.

The executive order requires the Department of Homeland Security to prepare a list of U.S. citizens eligible to vote in each state. That list would be derived in part from Social Security Administration data, a proposal that has already prompted lawsuits arising out of similar efforts by Tesla Inc. Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk’s government efficiency initiative last year.

The order will also require the Postal Service to only send absentee ballots to voters on the approved list and mandate that those ballots have envelopes and barcodes to ensure security and tracking. The post office already strongly recommends that election officials use special logos and barcodes on election mail, but doesn’t require it.

States, according to the order, must be provided with the voter lists at least 60 days before a federal election. States risk losing federal funds if they fail to comply.

Under the Constitution, states have responsibility for setting the “time, place and manner” of elections — though Congress can set uniform regulations for federal elections. Legal experts say Trump has virtually no authority to outlaw voting by mail outright without a change in law.

Still, Trump has sought to use the presidency to tip the scales toward Republicans in the 2026 congressional elections and beyond. He persuaded a number of GOP-led states — including North Carolina, Texas, and Missouri — to draw up new congressional maps that give Republican candidates an advantage this November.

Trump’s order comes despite a string of court decisions blocking his previous attempts to change election rules as unconstitutional.

Last week, the Supreme Court heard arguments in a case challenging whether a state can continue to count mail-in ballots that were postmarked by Election Day but received afterward. That case could also have broader implications for early voting.

Trump has claimed that the U.S. is the only country that uses mail-in voting. In fact, more than 30 countries — including much of Europe, Australia, Japan and the world’s largest democracy, India — use some form of postal voting, according to the Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance.

Its use in the Americas dates to colonial times and has long been a fallback method of voting for shift workers, people who are traveling and the infirm. Many states expanded the use of absentee voting during the coronavirus pandemic, and about three in 10 presidential ballots were cast by mail in 2024.

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(With assistance from Catherine Lucey.)

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