President Trump signed an executive order aimed at enhancing election integrity, which includes measures to ensure that mail-in ballots are properly sent and returned by voters.
He executed the order in the Oval Office, accompanied by Chief of Staff Will Schaaf and Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick. Reports, notably from Regan Reese of the Daily Caller, suggested Trump would be signing this order.
Prior to the signing, Schaaf elaborated on the order’s components.
“We’ll utilize federal data to make certain state election officials have thorough information about their voters, which will help in verifying the legality of each vote,” Schaaf stated regarding the initial measure.
Mark Wayne Mullin, the Secretary of Homeland Security, working alongside the Social Security Administration, has been instructed to create a “state citizenship list” for each state. This list will consist of U.S. citizens aged 18 and older who are residents of that state ahead of the next federal election.
Schaaf remarked that the order instructs the U.S. Postal Service, along with the postmaster general, to implement significant new strategies to make sure that ballots are sent to eligible voters and that returned ballots come only from them.
This order aims to address issues of previous election “abuses,” Schaaf mentioned.
“We trust that these steps in the executive order will help secure upcoming elections and prevent many past electoral issues from recurring,” he added.
Lutnick indicated that one specific measure for the postmaster general involves adding barcodes to mail-in ballots.
“Indeed, states handle their elections. If a state wishes to utilize the U.S. Postal Service, they’ll receive a barcode from the Postal Service to attach to an envelope. Each ballot will have its own envelope,” he explained.
Lutnick also noted that the government would be able to validate the total number of barcodes for the ballots that are received.
Trump asserted that Democrats favor mail-in voting because the system’s flaws allow for potential fraud.
