President Trump Signs executive order requiring proof of citizenship in federal elections.

Trumps listens during an ambassador meeting in the White House, March 25th 2025 Washington, DC.(Win McNamee/Getty Images)

Tuesday, March 25th, President Trump signed an executive order to protect “election integrity.” The order looks to enforce citizenship requirements for federal elections and threatens to cut federal funding to any states that do not abide by the new rules and regulations.

It also opens up all voting infrastructure and electronic ballots to further inspection. Specifically, mail-in ballots are targeted; stating that all mail-in ballots received after the Election Day in the final tabulation of votes are to be void and if a state violates this, the attorney general can take appropriate and all action against the states in question. However, a Washington Post analysis¹ found that just 372 out of an approximate 14.6 million mail in votes were possibly fraudulent. Meaning 0.0025 percent of mail-in ballots were cases of votes cast on behalf of a dead person or double voting. Nevertheless, President Trump has politicized it² and made it a key matter for many of his supporters, spreading exaggerated claims that, “MAIL-IN VOTING WILL LEAD TO MASSIVE FRAUD AND ABUSE,” he tweeted regarding the 2020 Presidential Election.

The larger issue with requiring proof of U.S. citizenship is that it makes voting drastically harder, especially for minority groups. Republicans have long benefited from repressing minority voters. In fact, it was a crucial strategy in the 2022 mid terms³ and has long been part of the Republican party election playbook.

Trump stated while signing the Executive Order that, “there are other steps we will be taking as a next [step], in the coming weeks” in regards to clamping down on so-called election interference and fraud.