President Trump signed a sweeping executive order on Tuesday evening targeting mail-in voting across the United States, a move that drew immediate legal threats from state officials and constitutional scholars who called it an overreach of presidential power. The signing ceremony, held in the Oval Office on March 31, 2026, also drew attention for a different reason — the 79-year-old president visibly struggled to read from his own handwritten notes during remarks to reporters.
The order, titled “Ensuring Citizenship Verification and Integrity in Federal Elections,” would task the U.S. Postal Service with determining who receives a mail ballot, according to CNN. It also requires the Department of Homeland Security, working alongside the Social Security Administration, to compile a list of verified U.S. citizens in each state who are eligible to vote. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, who joined Trump at the signing, said states using the U.S. mail for elections would be required to obtain a bar code from the USPS to place on mail-in ballot envelopes.
“We want to have honest voting in our country, because if you don’t have honest voting, you can’t have, really a nation if you want to know the truth,” Trump said in the Oval Office after signing the document, as CNBC reported. Trump told reporters he believes the executive order is legally “foolproof.” Notably, Trump himself recently voted by mail in Florida.
This marks Trump’s second executive order on elections during his second term. His first, signed approximately one year earlier, attempted to require documented proof of citizenship for voter registration and prohibit the counting of late-arriving mail ballots. Federal courts blocked its major provisions. Meanwhile, the SAVE America Act, a sweeping election overhaul that passed the House, has stalled in the Senate, where it needs 60 votes to advance under current chamber rules, according to NBC News.
Legal challenges appeared imminent within hours. Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Joy Campbell said her office is reviewing the order and will take legal action. “The Trump Administration cannot interfere with the right to vote and may not override state election authority,” she stated. Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes was more blunt, calling the executive order “a disgusting overreach from the federal government” and pledging to challenge it in court, as NPR reported.
Constitutional experts have raised serious doubts about the order’s legality. Article I, Section 4 of the Constitution gives states and Congress — not the president — the power to make laws governing elections. Rick Hasen, an election law expert at UCLA, wrote on his blog that the order is likely unconstitutional and that the timing makes it virtually impossible to implement before the November 2026 midterm elections, according to Votebeat.
Beyond the policy substance, the signing event itself became a story. Trump stumbled over words while reading from large handwritten notes, struggling with the word “glass” and saying “graph” and “grass” before correcting himself, The Daily Beast reported. His notes appeared to be written with a black Sharpie in very large letters, and photographers captured images of them during the event. “Just so you know, I wrote some of the things down,” Trump told reporters.
During the signing, Trump went on a tangent about a $400 million White House ballroom project, discussing security features including a “drone-proof roof” and bulletproof glass — the word that had tripped him up moments earlier. He referenced a federal judge who had previously ordered the administration to halt the ballroom project, saying, “Basically, he’s saying I need congressional approval.”
The verbal stumbles were not an isolated incident. In a separate earlier event celebrating Trump as the “Undisputed Champion of Coal,” the president reportedly struggled with the word “undisputed,” according to Yahoo News. Questions about the 79-year-old president’s verbal acuity have surfaced periodically throughout his second term.
White House spokesperson Davis Ingle pushed back firmly against any suggestion of concern. “President Trump is the sharpest, most accessible, and energetic president in American history,” Ingle said in response to media inquiries about the verbal difficulties.
The executive order now faces what is expected to be a protracted legal battle, with multiple states signaling they will fight the federal government’s attempt to assert control over mail-in voting procedures. Whether any of its provisions survive judicial review — and whether implementation is even feasible before the 2026 midterms — remains deeply uncertain.