Shapiro vows to ‘protect’ Pa. voters from Trump order on voting by mail
President Donald Trump has repeatedly claimed that mail-in voting has contributed to widespread election fraud, including in the 2020 election when he lost by more than 7 million votes.
By TOM FONTAINE
TribLive
Gov. Josh Shapiro opposes an executive order by President Donald Trump that attempts to place tighter restrictions on mail-in voting.
“President Trump can sign whatever the hell he wants to, but it won’t change the Constitution. The authority to set our election rules belongs to the states — and as governor, I will protect your right to vote,” Shapiro wrote on X late Tuesday.
Shapiro didn’t offer any specifics, and his office didn’t immediately respond to questions Wednesday.
Multiple states have promised to challenge Trump’s executive order in court.
The order, signed Tuesday, directs the Department of Homeland Security to compile a list of U.S. citizens who will be 18 or older at the time of an upcoming election and then submit lists to state elections officials at least 60 days prior to an election.
The order also directs the U.S. Postal Service not to send mail-in or absentee ballots to anyone who isn’t on a state citizenship list created by the federal government.
It also requires ballots to be mailed out in envelopes marked as official election mail and have barcodes on them so they can be tracked.
The citizenship lists will not indicate whether people are properly registered to vote, just that they are eligible, according to the order. The order said people will be able to access their records and update or correct them if necessary.
The lists will be generated from federal citizenship and naturalization records, Social Security records, data from the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) program, and other federal databases, the order said.
The order said states failing to comply risk losing federal funding.
“I don’t know how it can be challenged. They’ll probably challenge it, and you may have to find a rogue judge … that’s the only way that could be changed,” Trump told reporters after signing the order in the Oval Office of the White House.
“The cheating on mail-in voting is legendary. It’s horrible what’s going on,” Trump said. “I think this will help a lot with elections.”
Pennsylvania Secretary of State Al Schmidt, who oversees elections in the state, said the U.S. Constitution gives states — not the president — the authority to administer elections. He described mailin voting in Pennsylvania as “safe and secure.”
“I’ll continue to ensure that it’s not impeded by needless 00086930
barriers justified by phantom threats of ineligible voters casting ballots,” Schmidt said in a statement to Trib-Live.
“Pennsylvania’s elections have never been more safe and secure, as verified by two different audits conducted by counties of the voter-verified paper ballots after every election,” Schmidt added.
A statewide audit conducted after last year’s primary “identified no discrepancies in vote totals between the machine- reported candidate totals and the hand-audited batches,” according to the Department of State.
Trump has repeatedly claimed that mail-in voting has contributed to widespread election fraud, including in the 2020 election when he lost by more than 7 million votes.
Multiple court rulings, government agencies and independent investigations concluded there was no evidence of widespread election fraud or cheating in 2020.
