Trump's war against voting

NPR - Adding a citizenship question to U.S. census forms — a change that many Republicans in Congress and President Trump have wanted — would likely undermine the accuracy of the country's population counts, a new peer-reviewed study shows. The findings, published last week in the Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, build on earlier research by the Census Bureau and quantify longstanding concerns among opponents of the question, who fear it could derail the once-a-decade tally of U.S. residents that's used to redistribute political representation and federal funding to communities. 

The Guardian - Donald Trump has signed a far-reaching executive order that promises to fundamentally disrupt American voter registration processes, introducing measures so restrictive they could in effect disenfranchise millions of citizens if enacted. Described by Will Scharf, the White House staff secretary, on Tuesday as “the farthest reaching executive action taken” in the nation’s history, the order represents the latest in a long list of assaults against immigration, but also on current voting systems.

The sweeping order amends the federal voter registration form to require proof of citizenship in order to vote. It demands documentary proof for citizenship such as a passport to be eligible to vote in federal elections, empowers federal agencies to cut funding to states deemed non-compliant and instructs the Department of Justice to prosecute what the White House paints as “election crimes”.

The measure also seeks to block states from accepting mail-in ballots after election day, regardless of when they are mailed in.

Many of the provisions in the order are likely to be quickly challenged and are legally suspect. The US constitution explicitly gives states and Congress the authority to set the rules for election and does not authorize the president to do so.

“The short answer is that this executive order, like all too many that we’ve seen before, is lawless and asserts all sorts of executive authority that he most assuredly does not have,” said Danielle Lang, a voting rights lawyer at the non-profit Campaign Legal Center.

Republicans have long sought to add a citizenship to the federal form and been stymied by the courts. In a 7-2 decision in 2013, for example, the US supreme court said that Arizona could not require proof of citizenship to vote in federal elections. The power to set the requirements on the federal form is left to the bipartisan Election Assistance Commission. Courts have also blocked efforts to short-circuit efforts to add the question.