In a sweeping new executive order, President Donald Trump has reignited a contentious fight over voter registration lists, executive authority, and federal election laws while also assigning Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) a high-stakes mission: investigating potential voter fraud.
The order directs DOGE to collaborate with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to review publicly available voter registration data and maintenance records, cross-checking them against federal and state databases in search of noncitizen voting a rare and already illegal occurrence.
This move echoes a failed effort from Trump’s first term, when his Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity, led by then Vice President Mike Pence and former Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, attempted to compile a national voter file. That commission faced fierce resistance, with 44 states and D.C. refusing to fully comply, citing privacy concerns and skepticism about its purpose. Even Republican officials pushed back then-Mississippi Secretary of State Delbert Hosemann famously told the commission to “go jump in the Gulf of Mexico.” The group disbanded without uncovering evidence of widespread fraud.
Now, Trump appears determined to equip DOGE with stronger enforcement tools, including potential subpoenas and threats to withhold federal law enforcement grants from uncooperative states. Legal experts warn this could lead to messy, unreliable data comparisons and false fraud claims.
“The Pence-Kobach commission hit legal and political walls because it lacked authority to demand state voter files,” said Justin Levitt, a constitutional law scholar at Loyola Law School. “This time, the administration seems willing to escalate, risking flawed conclusions from mismatched datasets.”
Charles Stewart III, an MIT elections expert, cautioned that without uniform data standards, DOGE’s efforts could produce millions of inaccurate matches, fueling baseless fraud allegations. “The chaos from poorly executed cross-state comparisons could be mind-boggling,” he said.
As the battle over voter files unfolds, the order sets the stage for another clash between federal overreach and state autonomy with DOGE at the center.
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