Federal judge blocks Trump election executive order in WA, Oregon

SEATTLE – A federal judge has blocked the Trump administration’s attempt to assert federal control over elections in Washington and Oregon.

The lawsuit, filed jointly with Oregon in the Western District of Washington, was at least the third challenge to President Donald Trump’s March 25 executive 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.

The judge found that the executive order violated the separation of powers. A separate collection of 19 states filed a similar lawsuit against Trump’s order.

“Today’s ruling is a huge victory for voters in Washington and Oregon, and for the rule of law,” Attorney General Nick Brown said in a statement. “The court enforced the long-standing constitutional rule that only States and Congress can regulate elections, not the Election Denier-in-Chief.”

As Brown announced the lawsuit in April, Secretary of State Steve Hobbs said requiring proof of citizenship to register to vote would harm eligible voters including seniors, naturalized citizens and low-income residents. Under Washington law, those registering to vote must attest to their citizenship, which Hobbs said is regularly checked.

Hobbs claimed the requirement that ballots be received by Election Day could disenfranchise hundreds of thousands of voters who have submitted ballots on time if they had not been received by Election Day.

“This ruling is a victory for Washington voters and the rule of law,” Hobbs said in a statement. “It draws a firm line between enforcing the law and trying to remake it, and it protects voters and local election officials from political overreach that would have made our elections less fair, not more secure. My office will continue to ensure elections in our state are free, fair, and accessible to all voters, and today’s ruling protects our ability to keep them that way.”

In his executive order, Trump wrote, “The United States now fails to enforce basic and necessary election protections.” The order threatened states that did not comply with the loss of federal funding.

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.

Washington and Oregon are among the eight states that solely use vote-by-mail. While voting by mail had long been an option in Washington, the state Legislature adopted a vote-by-mail system in 2011.

Trump has long challenged the security of the country’s voting systems, and claimed, without evidence, significant voter fraud, particularly in states that rely on vote-by-mail.

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

As the lawsuit was announced, Hobbs pointed to the August 2024 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.

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