WASHINGTON — President Trump signed an election integrity executive order Tuesday mandating a citizenship question on the Federal Voting form for the first time.
“Perhaps some people think I shouldn’t be complaining because we won in a landslide, but we’re going to straighten out our election,” Trump told reporters at the White House.
The order will mandate voters to show proof of citizenship to state or local officials before they go to the voting booths — and the officials to record the details of the citizenship document, like date of expiration, on the form.
The executive order will also instruct the Election Assistance Commission to cut state funding if they don’t comply with taking measures to secure elections — and will instruct the Department of Justice to crack down on election-related crimes.
It is already illegal for noncitizens to vote in US federal elections, but Republicans have long pushed to have more checkpoints to ensure secure elections.
The House passed a bill in July mandating voters to present proof of citizenship, but the bill stalled in the Senate.
The order also calls on the Department of Homeland Security, alongside the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), to comb through publicly available voter registration lists in parallel with immigration data bases to ensure consistency.
DHS Secretary Kristi Noem is instructed to provide Attorney General Pam Bondi with the list of noncitizens discovered to have illegally voted in elections.
Proof of citizenship is currently usually not required to register to vote, but lying on your application as a noncitizen could result in deportation.
The president has also called for proof of voter ID, but has not yet included that in an executive order.
The president has messaged on the importance of having secure elections since the 2020 election, when millions of people used mail-in ballots during the COVID-19 pandemic, resulting in Trump’s defeat to former President Joe Biden and accusations of the results being “rigged.”
Trump has since called for paper ballots and for voting to finish up after one day, streamlining the counting process.
“We should go to one-day voting. We should go to voter ID and just one other thing, proof of a thing called citizenship in the United States. Wouldn’t that be nice?” Trump said at the White House on Monday.
“We have to straighten out our country. We have to straighten out our elections. Our elections are very dishonest, very corrupt, and we have to straighten it out.”
Trump specifically targeted California’s election processes after the January wildfires around Malibu, saying, “I want voter ID for the people of California, and they all want it.”
“Right now, you have no — you don’t have voter ID. People want to have voter identification.”
