Washington challenges Trump election executive order

SEATTLE – Washington filed a lawsuit Friday against the Trump administration challenging the president’s attempt to impose federal control over elections.

The lawsuit, filed jointly with Oregon in the Western District of Washington, is at least the fifth challenge to President Donald Trump’s March 25 executive order. On Thursday, a collection of 19 states filed a similar lawsuit against Trump’s order, which would require citizens to provide evidence of citizenship when registering to vote and require that all mail ballots be received by Election Day to be counted.

As he announced the lawsuit, Washington Attorney General Nick Brown said the case is “narrow in focus and broad in its importance.”

“First and foremost, neither the Constitution nor any federal law gives the president authority to set rules for how states conduct elections,” Brown said. “Let me just say that again: The president has no authority to set rules for how states conduct their elections. It is the states that decide how voters are registered, it is the states that decide how ballots are counted.”

As he signed the executive order, Trump said the order would go “a long way toward ending election fraud” and indicated he would work to enact additional election-related measures “in the coming weeks.”

“We think we’ll be able to end up getting fair elections,” Trump said. “Perhaps some people think I shouldn’t be complaining because we won in a landslide, but we’ve got to straighten out our elections. 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.”

Trump has long challenged the security of the country’s voting systems, and claimed, without substantiated evidence, significant voter fraud.

Ahead of the 2016 election, Trump vowed to accept the election results if he won the race. While he won the electoral college, Trump claimed he would have also won the popular vote “if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally.”

As he sought re-election in 2020, Trump declared himself the victor of the race, as states across the country counted millions of ballots. During the first 2024 presidential debate, Trump said he would accept the November election results if there was a “fair and legal and good election.”

In his executive order, Trump wrote “The United States now fails to enforce basic and necessary election protections.”

An analysis of the results in six battleground states during the 2020 election conducted by the Associated Press, each of which was won by President Joe Biden, found 475 potential cases of voter fraud. Biden won the states by a combined 311,257 votes.

Washington’s entirely mail-in voting system also has built-in safeguards to prevent fraudulent votes from being cast, Secretary of State Steve Hobbs said Friday, including a collection of statewide databases with up-to-date voter registration that helps determine if someone attempts to vote in multiple states.

“This executive order by President Trump is the latest in a series of federal actions creating confusion and concern around how elections are run in this country,” Hobbs said. “For Washington state, this executive order threatens decades of progress and advancements that have made our elections secure, fair, and accessible.”

Hobbs pointed to the August primary to determine the commissioner of public lands, the tightest primary in state history. Following the manual recount of the 1.9 million ballots cast in the race, the difference between the second and third-place finishers narrowed slightly from 51 votes to 49.

“We saw some people that passed away, but the thing is, they voted, signed their ballot, and they passed away in between,” Hobbs said. “But that’s how accurate our records are.”

While voting by mail has long been an option in Washington, the state Legislature adopted a vote-by-mail system in 2011, which Brown said “led to us having one of the highest rates of voting in the nation.”

According to Hobbs, requiring all ballots to be received by Election Day to be counted “would have a serious impact on Washington voters.” During the 2024 election, county election officials in Washington received more than 300,000 ballots after Election Day.

“Under this executive order, every one of those votes would not have been counted,” Hobbs said.

Requiring proof of citizenship to register to vote would harm eligible voters including seniors, naturalized citizens and low-income residents, Hobbs said. Under Washington law, those registering to vote must attest to their citizenship, which Hobbs said is regularly checked.

Friday’s lawsuit claims that if the executive order were to be enforced, it would “disenfranchise untold numbers of voters nationwide, impose substantial new costs on states, and require states to revise their voting systems and equipment, all without any benefit to election security.”

In recent weeks, Trump has also raised the possibility of running for a third term in office, which Brown said Friday would be “unconstitutional.”

Rep. Sharlett Mena, D-Tacoma, who chairs the state Government and Tribal Relations Committee in the House, said, “The right to vote is given to citizens in the Constitution.”

“It should not depend on how many obstacles you can overcome to cast your ballot,” Mena said.

Friday’s lawsuit is the 11th Washington has brought against the Trump administration. Washington joined 16 other states on Friday to block cuts to grant funding issued by the National Institutes of Healt, which is the second case the state has brought concerning the funding.

On Friday, Washington also filed a response in the United States Supreme Court challenging Trump’s request to stay an injunction in the birthright citizenship case.

“I’m sorry to say, at the rate this is headed, we will have more cases in the future,” Brown said.