How Trump Will Try To Make Voting Restrictions Even Worse

0:06 The midterm elections are just two weeks away, with early voting already underway. And this year, more than many others in recent memory, there has been a plethora of attempts to make it harder for you to vote, or making it so your vote may not count the same way it has before. Literally, in cases legislating whether Trump can prevent mail-in ballots from being counted after Election Day, which he cannot, but also through partisan gerrymandering, mid-decade redistricting, and the gutting of the Voting Rights Act, which has resulted in the votes of some Black Americans in the South being diluted across newly drawn districts. The president has promised to give each U.S. citizen-adult $ 5, 000 if Republicans maintain control

1:00 of Congress. And this past month, the White House has used taxpayer dollars to broadcast pro-Trump campaign ads. About a week and a half ago, there was widely publicized photos of National Guard troops standing in front of ballot drop boxes in Washington, D.C. Troops who National Guard officials say were not stationed there to guard the ballot boxes. But voter intimidation through the presence of military, federal agents, or police officers at polling sites is a huge concern going into these midterms, especially as ICE is detaining both immigrants and U.S. citizens suspected of being immigrants at levels never before seen. Earlier this year, the Michigan Republican Senate candidate Mike Rogers, who's going up against Abdul El-Sayed, told Kalamazoo

1:55 County Republicans that he plans to recruit cops as, quote, poll watchers, according to leaked audio from a GOP meeting. Also saying, quote, go ahead, try to intimidate them.

2:09 So we called the RNC early and said, hey, you know, if we're going to do this again, I don't want to wake up at three, you know, go to bed at 2 a.m. in the winter and wake up at 4 a.m. I'm kind of done with that.

2:23 And so in a van.

2:24 Full of ballots that shows up in the middle of the evening, which I wish didn't happen. So what we got them to commit to was they're going to have a healthy voter integrity program. The fact that they've already hired a deputy told you how far ahead of the game we were. We weren't that far before. And I've been telling them, you know what, let's put police officers, retired or off-duty police officers as our poll watchers in Detroit police. Because, go ahead, try to intimidate them.

2:55 Please. What's that? We're trying to find them.

3:00 I mean, they wouldn't be able to wear their uniforms, but they would, you know, all you've got to do is open your jacket and you see the badge on the belt, right?

3:07 Also notable in this leaked audio is how Mike Rogers insinuates his last Senate race, which he lost to Alyssa Slotkin, was stolen from him because of a van full of ballots. It seems almost inevitable that if Republicans lose these midterms, they will invent all sorts of election conspiracy theories and spread false claims of mass voter fraud to both contest these results and limit free and fair elections in the future.

3:39 But this episode, I want to do an overview of the way the Trump administration is currently trying to make it harder to vote, what they have been able to do before the midterms, and finally, what they could do in the future. This is It Could Happen Here. I'm your host, Garrison Davis. The big thing Trump wants, but he'll probably never get, is the passage of the Save America Act, a bill that would require voters provide photo ID and proof of citizenship to register to vote in federal elections, not just a driver's license or even a real ID card. This would disenfranchise over 20 million Americans who do not have citizenship documents like passports or birth certificates readily available. Trump's SAVE Act would also mandate regular

4:34 voter roll purges and aims to heavily restrict mail-in or absentee voting. To quote the White House, quote, no mail-in ballots except for illness, disability, military, or travel. Much of Trump's election ire has been directed at absentee or mail-in voting, despite this being the very method by which Trump himself casts his ballot. I'm not going to focus on what passing the Save America Act specifically would mean for U.S. elections, because it's just not very likely that this bill will ever pass the Senate. But as Trump grew frustrated at the Save Act being indefinitely stalled, he turned to other means for similar ends. On March 31st, 2026, President Trump signed Executive Order 14399, or Ensuring Citizenship Verification and Integrity

5:34 in Federal Elections. This order was a test of executive power by attempting to institute federal policies similar to provisions within the SAVE Act, but through bypassing Congress entirely. In particular, the order focused on two things, having DHS create, quote, state citizenship lists, a list of individuals confirmed to be U.S.

6:00 citizens who will be above the age of 18 at the time of an upcoming federal election and who maintain residence in the subject state. And the order also directed the United States Postal Service to, quote, initiate a proposed rulemaking on mail-in and absentee ballots to, quote, establish uniform standards for mail-in or absentee ballot services. These new standards would include a new requirement that outbound absentee ballots feature a unique barcode to facilitate tracking, and a provision specifying that the USPS would not transmit any mail-in or absentee ballots for any individual who does not appear on a federal, state-by-state list of pre-verified voters. To create this list, which may or may not be the same as the state

6:53 citizenship list, the order keeps this kind of vague, but to create this list, the Secretary of Homeland Security, the Commissioner of the Social Security Administration, and the Postmaster General would coordinate to implement this executive order. According to the order, states would be able to quote, suggest modifications, to the Postal Service's state-specific mail-in and absentee participation list. So that all sounds bad. And a group of 23 states and the District of Columbia sued, alleging the executive order was unconstitutional and violated separation of powers by infringing on the state's authority to administer elections. In June, a district court in Massachusetts agreed and blocked the order. The Trump administration

7:42 appealed to the Supreme Court, and in August, the court issued an order on the shadow docket, with the conservative majority ruling 6-3, that the coalition of states and the district court lacked the legal authority to block the order because no harm had yet come from the executive order. So essentially, the Supreme Court lifted the lower court's injunction, allowing Trump's executive order to go into effect, because they thought it was just too soon for states to file a challenge, because the order hadn't yet gone into effect, and so the plaintiffs hadn't yet to suffer any injury.

8:23 This was totally crazy, and like totally defeats the entire point of the shadow docket. The whole point of the shadow docket, or the emergency interim docket, is that there's potential of serious irreparable harm if the court does not intervene. But in this ruling, the conservative majority wrote that the state's supposed concrete injury was only a, quote, unduly long chain of inferences. So this ruling in August gave the Trump administration the green light to have DHS create and send state citizenship lists to each state 60 days ahead of the upcoming federal elections. cataloging each person in every state who DHS believes is eligible to vote. Now, the Supreme Court wrote, quote, states are not required to use

9:18 the lists. But this executive order also requires the Attorney General to, quote, prioritize the investigation and, as appropriate, the prosecution of state and local officials or any others who issue federal ballots to ineligible voters. So, Trump is effectively compelling states to follow these DHS lists or else they will face prosecution. In their ruling, the conservative majority wrote that the lower court concluded states did suffer a present injury because the order required them to, quote, begin planning now on how to comply with it. But the Supreme Court wrote, states, quote, cannot manufacture standing merely by inflicting harm on themselves based on their fears of hypothetical future

10:12 harm that is certainly not impending, unquote. Though, of course, the conservative majority found that the government is, quote, likely to suffer irreparable harm without a stay. And so the stay was granted, lifting the injunction. But there was something interesting at the end of this Supreme Court ruling. They wrote, quote, the court's disposition on this application does not mean that any measure taken by the government to implement the order will necessarily be lawful. on that score, time will tell.

10:51 But the order itself does not harm the states, so the district court lacked jurisdiction to bar the government from trying to implement it, unquote. So the Supreme Court at least insinuates there that the Trump administration may not necessarily lawfully implement this executive order, but in order for states to file a challenge, the order has to at least partially go into effect. When this ruling was issued, the Postal Service had not yet published their final rule implementing parts of Trump's executive order. And so the court never addressed the part of the executive order requiring the Postal Service to review the eligibility of voters before transmitting their absentee ballots. And again, following this idea that the state's

11:44 lawsuit was premature, the conservative majority wrote in the order, quote, if the Postal Service's final rule harms the states, they may challenge that rule. And literally two days after the Supreme Court issued this order, the USPS published their new final rule amending the mailing standards regarding the transmission of mail-in or absentee ballots for federal elections. Quote, The final rule introduces new mail piece preparation requirements and data reporting standards for federal ballot mail that must be satisfied prior to presenting outbound federal ballot mail for acceptance into the mail stream, unquote. As outlined in Trump's executive order, the Postal Service's final rule would require states use new standardized

12:34 mail-in ballot envelope designs to be compatible with automated processing, display a consistent election mail logo, and a unique intelligent mail barcode. But the rule also introduced a new digital, quote, federal ballot mail portal that state and local election officials would have to use to administer absentee ballots. Not only would this portal be how state officials certified the design of their standardized envelopes, but election officials would also have to upload the name and address of each absentee or mail-in voter, as found on the outbound federal ballot mail envelope, the issuing state, and the intelligent mail barcode. This data would have to be submitted to the portal, quote, prior

13:23 to presenting in outbound federal ballot mailing for acceptance. Rather than the 60-day deadline in Trump's executive order, the Postal Service's final rule recommends states upload this voter data into the portal at least 30 days before the election. This, quote, flexible 30-day timeline accommodates variations in state law, unquote. But importantly, this voter data must be submitted to this new digital portal before the Postal Service will accept any mail-in ballots. Quote, there should be minimal to no delay between portal upload and a mailer's ability to present the mailing for acceptance.

14:10 the Postal Service will generally not accept outbound federal ballot mailings unless compliance with the new rules standards has been verified, unquote. This new final rule did state that the Postal Service would not play, quote, any role in determining voter eligibility, maintaining voter rules, or counting ballots. But the rule also states, quote, portal data will also be available, for verification purposes on a nationwide basis, unquote. If some of that just sounds confusing, that's because it is. The implementation of Trump's executive order in this final rule was not very clear at all, did not follow proper protocol, and resulted in whistleblowers from USPS coming forward with concerns about the implementation of this

15:07 final rule. And though the Supreme Court stayed one injunction blocking the implementation of the executive order, a separate temporary restraining order prevented certain sections of this final rule from immediately going into effect. The published final rule says that the Postal Service is ready to immediately implement these new standards in preparation for the 2026 election as soon as all of the lower court injunctions are lifted. But a few days after the rule was published, A coalition of 23 states again filed a lawsuit, as instructed by the Supreme Court, and the same district court judge issued a new preliminary injunction. And then on September 13th, a second federal judge also blocked the Postal Service's newly adopted final rule.

15:59 Trump appointee Judge Carl Nichols found that the Postal Service lacked the authority to require states to submit a list of eligible voters to this online portal and only transmit ballots to voters verified on the portal. Judge Nichols wrote that if the rule was implemented, there would be a quote, increased risk that a significant number of otherwise appropriate absentee or mail-in ballots will ultimately not be counted in the upcoming elections, unquote. And then just a day later, the Supreme Court issued a shadow docket ruling denying the Trump administration's request to lift the first injunction blocking the implementation of the Postal Service's final rule, finding that, quote, the government is unlikely to succeed on the merits of its challenge.

16:53 And this appeared to be a 7-2 ruling, with Samuel Alito penning a dissent, which was joined by Clarence Thomas. Though Brett Kavanaugh wrote of one paragraph concurring opinion agreeing to let the injunction against the rule remain, though he suggested that the Postal Service may have the authority to implement the rule in the future, just not in the two months prior to an election, stating, quote, in my view, based on the briefing the court has received at this interim stage, there is at least a fair prospect that the final rule falls within the Postal Service's statutory authority.

17:37 But applying the rule in the 2026 elections would be arbitrary and capricious in violation of the Administrative Procedure Act because state and local officials do not have sufficient time to reasonably implement the rule before the elections. For that reason, I concur in the denial of the application for stay.

17:59 We'll come back to the future implications of this ruling at the end of the episode, But first, here's some ads. Okay, we are back. Restricting mail-in voting and this final rule from the Postal Service is only one half of Trump's executive order. The other concerns the creation of state citizenship lists to verify voters. The federal government does not have a centralized registry of citizens. But since last year, DHS has been trying to retrofit something called the SAVE system, not to be confused with the SAVE Act, though both aim to suppress voters. But the DHS has been trying to expand this SAVE system so it can be used to verify large batches of voters. by integrating data from other agencies like the State Department and the Social Security Administration. SAVE,

19:10 in this case, stands for Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements. It was created in the 80s to verify the citizenship and immigration status of people applying for public benefits, like Medicaid and food stamps. In March of 2025... Trump signed a different executive order titled Preserving and Protecting the Integrity of American Elections, which instructed DHS to put new systems into place to allow state and local authorities to verify the citizenship status of those registered to vote and directed.

19:50 the Social Security Administration to make their records available to DHS for that purpose. So DHS began modifying the SAVE system by incorporating confidential data from the Social Security Administration and altering the system to allow authorities to conduct bulk searches of multiple individuals at once. To date, 27 states already use the SAVE system to verify voters. And last year, some states began testing the newly modified database. After Trump signed this election integrity order last year, voting rights organizations sued, and a district court blocked the order, finding that the overhauled SAVE system quote, trampled on the privacy rights of American citizens in a manner that threatens the sacred right

20:43 to vote. But the Trump administration went to the Supreme Court, asking them to lift the district court's injunction, alleging that the government faced irreparable harm if they weren't allowed to use the save system to purge voter rolls. Without a full briefing or oral argument, the conservative majority ruled 6-3 and granting the stay, clearing the way for Trump to implement the new safe system and allow DHS to purge voter rolls. I talked about this a little bit in an executive disorder episode a few weeks ago. In the lawsuit that first prevented the government from using this newly modified safe system, the plaintiffs alleged that the integration of SSA, Social Security Administration data, violates multiple privacy protections. and that

21:36 the use of the data to purge voter rolls risks irreparable harm to voters who are mistakenly removed from voter rolls due to inaccurate or out-of-date information in the databases that Save is using. And this harm is not just hypothetical. When Texas began testing out the newly modified Save system last year, it had an error rate of over 20%.

22:06 and part of why the SAVE system is so inaccurate, especially now that it's pulling from Social Security data, is because Social Security Administration data does not necessarily reflect someone's current immigration or citizenship status. For example, I was given an SSN as a teenager after my family immigrated to the U.S., but because I later acquired U.S. citizenship through one of my parents, my Social Security number does not correspond to my citizenship status, and I often have to verify my citizenship status with a passport. It's also important to keep in mind that Social Security Administration data is not just Social Security numbers, but also, quote, names, dates and places of birth, citizenship indicators, death records, and information

22:58 obtained while processing requests for Social Security numbers, per the Supreme Court. So if the save system flags someone or a search comes up inconclusive, voters could be required to take additional affirmative steps to prove their citizenship or naturalization, possibly within a very short window or risk being removed from the voter rules and unable to exercise their right to vote. In the short, unsigned opinion, the conservative majority writes, quote, If the modified SAVE program is unable to confirm that an individual is a citizen, the agency is required to contact the individual and request that he provide proof of citizenship to register or remain registered to vote, unquote. In her dissent, Justice Jackson echoed the concerns of the plaintiffs

23:54 that the, quote, staleness of Social Security Administration citizenship records risked disenfranchising recently naturalized US citizens. And again, this is not some sort of hypothetical harm. According to a ProPublica report from last February, quote, DHS has had to correct information provided to at least five states after Save misidentified some voters as non-citizens. And per Jackson's dissent, in Texas, one woman had her voter registration revoked completely without her knowledge, and two more had to provide proof of citizenship to maintain registered voter status. I really don't want to gloss over the fact that already in Texas, a U.S. citizen was removed from voter registration because of the save system

24:50 without her knowledge. She did not know that this happened. Imagine you walk up to the polling site ready to vote, only to learn that that you've been removed from the voter rolls because of DHS's janky verification system. That is actual irreparable harm. But the majority opinion of the Supreme Court just didn't consider this harm posed to lawful voters, but rather focused on the harms the government could purportedly suffer if they aren't allowed to use the revamped save system.

25:26 The bulk of the majority opinion focuses on defending the legality of DHS using what is otherwise protected confidential data from the Social Security Administration. In contrast with the District Court, the Supreme Court agreed with the government's argument that a provision of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act, Section 1373, actually already granted DHS permission to access confidential SSA data Thus, the use of that data in the SAVE program does not violate the privacy protections within the Social Security Act or the Privacy Act. And I apologize for this getting a little jargony, but I cannot emphasize the magnitude of this enough. Section 1373 has never before

26:22 been invoked this way and poses massive threats to privacy. I will lightly paraphrase for clarity 8 U.S.C. 1373, quote, Notwithstanding any other provision of federal, state, or local law, no person, agency, government entity, or official may prohibit or in any way restrict any government entity or official from sending or receiving information regarding the citizenship or immigration status, lawful or unlawful, of any individual to DHS.

26:57 Unquote.

26:58 Now, because of that first bit on, quote, notwithstanding other laws, the Supreme Court majority found that Section 1373, quote, likely supersedes restrictions on disclosure elsewhere in the code. And thus, DHS is authorized to request, receive, and send otherwise confidential information from the Social Security Administration. What the majority is doing here is they're combining that notwithstanding clause with 1373 subsection C, which, quote, requires DHS to respond to inquiries from state and local agencies seeking to verify or ascertain the citizenship or immigration status of any individual, unquote. But as written, that subsection does not require DHS to respond to requests with confidential data from other agencies. It doesn't

27:53 entitle them to otherwise protected data. In her dissent, Jackson summarizes what the majority's opinion here is. Quote, as the majority sees things, Congress's prohibiting interference with the disclosure of information regarding citizenship status to DHS necessarily authorizes DHS to request and receive that information from the SSA, regardless of whether some other law prohibits disclosure. The majority thus treats section 1373 as essentially overriding the limits that privacy laws impose on the sharing of citizenship information with DHS, unquote. Now, Jackson calls the majority's interpretation, quote, implausible and accuses them of, quote, misreading the statutory text in a few important ways. Mainly

28:52 that these provisions are don't empower government agencies to take any affirmative action to overrule privacy protections, but rather they bar government entities, officials, persons, or agencies from unlawfully prohibiting or restricting the exchange of citizenship information with DHS. To quote Jackson, quote, these provisions do not affirmatively grant any power.

29:21 nor do they override any explicit statutory limits on information sharing. Rather, both provisions bar government entities or employees from interfering with otherwise lawful exchanges of citizenship information, notwithstanding that such interference may be permitted under some other law. When a law imposes an express restriction on disclosure, it is that law, not an entity, official, person, or agency, that is doing the, quote, prohibiting or, quote, restricting. In the majority's opinion, they have a little footnote. Responding to Jackson's claim here, quote, the distinction the dissent draws between laws and those tasked with enforcing them is illusory. Prohibitions necessarily include invoking a law

30:13 to deny a request for or transfer of such information, unquote. But this snarky little remark ignores that other provisions in the illegal immigration reform and immigrant responsibility act place, quote, strict limits on what information SSA can disclose. And Jackson notes that those limits would be pointless if Section 1373 supersedes any and all privacy protections as claimed by the government and the Supreme Court majority. To quote Jackson, There is no reason to believe that Congress meant to repeal laws that would otherwise prohibit federal agencies from disclosing citizenship information.

31:01 Nothing in 1373 authorizes the modified SAVE system or overrides the provisions of the Social Security Act and the Privacy Act, unquote. To bolster her argument, Jackson also notes that Bill Clinton's Office of Legal Counsel said, shared this same interpretation of Section 1373 all the way back in 1999, writing that the section does, quote, not clearly invest government officials or entities with the affirmative authority to disclose information in circumstances where they would otherwise be prohibited from doing so by a federal statute, unquote. And I go over all of these details not to be Confusing or annoying, but because again, this is a shadow docket ruling, meaning that this case will likely be heard again by the Supreme Court, and

31:58 some of these justifications may matter in the future. So as bad and frankly bullshit as this ruling is, According to Jackson, it will, quote, likely have minimal short-term impact. And that's because the National Voter Registration Act prohibits states from, quote, systematically removing the names of ineligible voters from their rolls in the 90 days prior to any primary or general election.

32:39 But this doesn't mean that it will have no impact on the midterms, because the government is still allowed to use the new save system, to conduct, quote, individualized inquiries per the majority. Jackson writes that states will, quote, at most conduct individualized voter rule maintenance using the modified save system prior to the midterms. But at the end of her dissent, she stresses, quote, the harm caused by burdening or disenfranchising even a few lawful voters' outweighs the non-existent harm that the government experiences when it is prevented from taking an action that it likely lacks the authority to take.

33:25 For 2026, voter intimidation remains the biggest threat to elections. Whether that's coming from Mike Rogers' personal goons or some federal force near polling sites, be that National Guard or ICE. which DHS officials have said won't patrol the polls, but told the Associated Press, quote, if an active public safety threat endangered a polling location, they may be arrested as a result of that targeted enforcement action. With DHS also saying they are, quote, laser-focused on prosecuting and removing aliens who vote and preventing the dilution of the votes of U.S. citizens.

34:13 Beyond voter intimidation, the Trump administration and Republicans may also attempt to delegitimize election results based on allegations of fraud. And this is yet another way the new save system could be of some use. Given its high error rate, it's quite simple to inflate the number of votes that are under suspicion of being fraudulently cast to if the Trump administration gains access to cast ballots or voting machines and tries to audit the results. They don't even need to prove fraud. They just need to create an air of uncertainty to manufacture a political crisis. And the SAVE system can provide that uncertainty. But what really concerns me is what could happen after the midterms, in the two

35:04 years before the 2028 election. there will be enough time for the constitutionality of the Postal Service's final rule, with the digital federal ballot mail portal and vague verification requirements, to be fully litigated and potentially implemented. Supreme Court Justices Alito and Thomas have already made it clear that they want the rule implemented, and Kavanaugh seems sympathetic. Without the time constraint of an impending election... Where the rest of the conservative justices stand on questions of constitutionality, delegating election authority, and separation of powers as they relate to the Postal Service's final rule is not yet clear. And whenever they decide, I do want to echo the opinion of Trump appointee

35:53 Judge Nichols that the USPS final rule poses a quote, increased risk that a significant number of otherwise appropriate absentee or mail-in ballots will ultimately not be counted. If the Republicans lose the midterms, which seems likely, Trump's general power may be more limited. But that may also result in his efforts being tailored to a few select issues that he can direct his full executive power towards. And the election issue has been a quite personal issue for President Trump.

36:32 I can't see him doing anything other than doubling down on implementing the full extent of these executive orders, including the, quote, state citizenship lists. But in terms of something that can immediately happen right after the midterms, literally the day after the election, states can start using DHS's save system to purge voter rolls en masse by, quote unquote, verifying large batches of voters. The only thing preventing that right now is the 90-day prohibition on the quote-unquote systemic removal before an election. On the question of save's legality, the Supreme Court's conservative majority wrote that the challengers are unlikely to prevail on the merits of their claims, even though Jackson

37:22 points out in her dissent that the majority opinion breaks from previous interpretations of federal law and plainly misreads the statutory text. reversing their decision may require an entirely new Supreme Court. Retrofitting the save system to conduct bulk searches of potentially ineligible voters is one part of a much larger strategy. Since 2025, the Trump administration has tried to gain access to states' voter rolls, with the DOJ suing over 30 states for not complying with federal requests. over a dozen states, mostly Republican-controlled states, have complied and handed over their voter registration lists. For states that have not complied, the Trump administration has employed multiple tactics to try to

38:12 gain access to their voting records, including by just seizing them physically, like in Georgia. We don't know if this was done with Save specifically, but this past summer, DHS notified the state of Nevada that that they had almost 16,000 non-citizens on their voter rolls. Then DHS said that they were able to confirm at least 185 individual cases of non-citizens registered to vote. But when state election officials looked into these cases, they found that every one of those 185 voters was actually a U.S.

38:49 Citizen.

38:53 Meanwhile, in Texas, save falsely flagged over 500 voters as non-citizens. Simply put, having DHS try to determine the eligibility of U.S. citizen voters doesn't seem like a good idea, and it doesn't seem like they are very good at it. Except, of course, this is precisely what DHS is setting out to do, remove as many people from the voter rolls as possible, whether or not they are actually eligible to vote.

39:26 The new save system would not only disenfranchise eligible voters by removing them from voter rolls, potentially even without their knowledge, like in Texas, but also in the age of ICE mass deportations and the prospect that you as a voter could be investigated or scrutinized by DHS based on your name being flagged by some database could absolutely dissuade U.S.

39:55 citizens born or naturalized from registering to vote and exercising their right to vote, especially if they live with or are in proximity to undocumented immigrants. And that fear, that intimidation, That is part of the point. If Stephen Miller can't strip naturalized citizens of their right to vote, this is his compromise. It Could Happen Here is a production of Cool Zone Media.

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