Progressive groups denounce move as effort to suppress millions of voters who do not have ready access to government ID.
United States President Donald Trump has signed an executive order requiring Americans to provide proof of citizenship to vote, claiming the move is necessary to “straighten out” election fraud.
Trump’s order signed on Tuesday calls on the Election Assistance Commission to require prospective voters to produce a US passport or other valid government ID when registering for federal elections.
The order also directs US states to receive all votes by election day and not count mail-in ballots that arrive after the polls have closed.
Trump said his order would “hopefully” end election fraud, while repeating his false claim that he won the 2020 presidential election in a “landslide”.
“At least this will go a long way toward ending it, there are other steps that we will be taking in the coming weeks, and we think we will be able to end up getting fair elections,” Trump said as he signed the order at the White House.
“We’ve got to straighten out our election,” Trump added.
“This country is so sick because of the election, the fake elections, and the bad elections, And we’re going to straighten it out, one way or the other.”
Trump’s order continues his long history of railing against alleged election fraud, including voting by non-citizens, which is illegal and shown in studies to be extremely rare.
Trump has often questioned the outcomes of elections that have not gone his way, including his 2020 defeat to former US President Joe Biden, which he falsely attributed to widespread voting irregularities.
Democrats and progressive groups have long opposed Republican-led efforts to require voters to produce ID on the grounds that poor and older voters may not have easy access to documents such as passports and birth certificates.
Lisa Gilbert, co-president of Public Citizen, a progressive advocacy group, described Trump’s order as a “blatant attack on democracy” and “an authoritarian power grab”.
“Donald Trump’s executive order would compromise our election systems, suppress the votes of millions of Americans, especially voters of colour, and pave the way for still more Trumpian false claims of election fraud,” Gilbert said in a statement.
Richard Hasen, a law professor at the University of California who runs Election Law Blog, also denounced the move, saying it would disenfranchise potentially millions of voters.
“This would prevent only a tiny amount of noncitizen voter registration but stop millions of eligible voters, who do not have easy access to documents such as passports from registering to vote,” Hasen said on his blog.
“The aim here is voter suppression pure and simple,” he added.