Aug. 31 (UPI) — President Donald Trump announced late Saturday that he would sign an executive order requiring voters to present identification when casting ballots.
“Voter ID must be part of every single vote. No exceptions!” Trump said on his Truth Social platform. “I will be doing an executive order to that end! Also, no mail-in voting, except for those that are very ill, and the far away military. Use paper ballots only!”
The president did not provide any further details about the planned executive order, which comes amid his push to influence how elections are carried out in the United States. Trump has long claimed without evidence that voter fraud cost him the 2020 presidential election.
This is not Trump’s first foray into voter ID via executive order. In March, he signed a similar mandate requiring documentary proof of citizenship, such as passports or government-issued IDs, for voter registration in federal elections.
At the time, a White House fact sheet described the executive order as a way “to protect the integrity of American elections.”
“There are other steps that we will be taking in the coming weeks and we think we’ll be able to end up getting fair elections,” Trump hinted at the time. “This country is so sick because of the elections, the fake elections and the bad elections and we’re going to straighten it out one way or the other.”
But that order encountered immediate backlash, with critics characterizing it as a modern-day poll tax, arguing that many Americans lack the required documents, and warning it would disenfranchise low-income, elderly and marginalized voters.
A federal court later blocked the order’s documentary proof-of-citizenship requirement for federal voter registration forms, citing constitutional overreach.
Similarly, California Secretary of State Shirley Weber and others have vocally opposed nationwide voter ID mandates, viewing them as attempts to undermine progressive state-level voting reforms and restrict access to the ballot box.
It is expected that the latest executive order will also be widely and swiftly challenged ahead of the midterm elections in November 2026.
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