Why Election Integrity Should Be A Core Focus Of Trump 2.0

President Donald Trump and his transition team are preparing to launch his second term with a series of high-profile executive actions on critical issues like the border, trade, and national security. Promoting election integrity ought to be high on the list of priorities.

The federal role in elections is limited, and rightly so. The Constitution leaves the power to regulate elections with the states. But the Biden administration and its Democrat allies expanded and abused federal power to stack the deck for their own reelections. They failed, and now President Trump has the chance to right the ship.

Trump can start by repealing Executive Order 14019, Joe Biden’s unprecedented attempt to weaponize the federal government to help elect Democrats and defeat Donald Trump. The order requires every agency to focus on voter registration and get-out-the-vote activities in close coordination with partisan left-wing groups like the ACLU and the League of Women Voters. Small wonder, then, that the administration’s efforts were focused on driving turnout among college students, so-called “underrepresented groups,” and other demographics that make up the core of the Democratic Party.

Much of what the administration did remains hidden from Congress and the public, but what we know is shocking. Earlier this year, Vice President Harris announced that the Federal Work-Study program would pay students to register and turn out voters, a policy only a hair away from buying votes with tax dollars.

The U.S. Marshals Service renegotiated jail contracts across the country to require officials to provide voter registration materials to federal prisoners, with no apparent regard for whether they are eligible to vote or are even citizens.

And the Small Business Administration signed an unprecedented decade-long voter registration agreement with Democrat officials in Michigan, just weeks after a mass protest vote in the Democratic Primary revealed huge problems there for the Biden campaign.

Each of these, and the countless other rules, “Dear Colleague” letters, and agency actions that resulted from the Biden order should be systematically identified and undone. Existing contracts with third party groups for voter registration, mobilization, and related activities should be terminated. President Trump should issue his own order affirmatively banning any federal involvement in voter registration and turnout activities in the future, unless federal law explicitly requires it. The Trump administration should also release the planning documents and records the Biden administration has refused to disclose to Congress. And the Justice Department should consider opening investigations if the evidence suggests that officials violated federal laws like the Hatch Act by using their offices to illegally influence the election. 

Speaking of DOJ, under Merrick Garland the agency has chosen to spend its resources attacking popular voting laws in red states like Georgia and suing to force Virginia to add self-identified noncitizens to the rolls ahead of the election. Incoming Attorney General Pam Bondi has the chance to end that nonsense and refocus the Department on investigating and prosecuting election crimes like noncitizen voting. Rather than support Marc Elias-backed lawsuits, Trump’s DOJ should aggressively defend voter ID laws, citizenship requirements, and other commonsense election integrity measures against baseless attacks in the courts. And the Department could go on offense, suing states with bloated voter rolls for violating the National Voter Registration Act’s clear requirements to maintain clean and accurate lists.

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The Trump administration should also make it far easier for state officials to use federal records to identify and remove ineligible noncitizens from the voter rolls. Under Biden, the federal government made it a chore to access programs like Homeland Security’s Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements, prompting states like Ohio to sue for access. The Trump Administration should require federal officials to grant access promptly upon request and look for ways to make accessing these resources as easy and inexpensive as possible.

President Trump has the chance to make election integrity a cornerstone of his second term. Dismantling harmful policies like Executive Order 14019, defending election integrity laws, and empowering our states are critical steps to strengthen the foundation of our constitutional republic. By taking bold action, President Trump can rebuild faith in the democratic process and help make elections great again.

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Jason Snead is the executive director of Honest Elections Project Action.

The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.