Citing India, Trump calls for election reform in US through executive order

TOI Correspondent from Washington: Approvingly citing the conduct of elections in India among other countries, President Donald Trump on Tuesday issued an executive order aimed at reforming the election process in America, including a requirement for voters to prove they are US citizens when they register to vote.

"Despite pioneering self-government, the United States now fails to enforce basic and necessary election protections employed by modern, developed nations, as well as those still developing. India and Brazil, for example, are tying voter identification to a biometric database, while the US largely relies on self-attestation for citizenship," Trump said in the order widely seen as a federal executive overreach that is certain to be challenged in courts.

The US Constitution delegates power to regulate the “time, place and manner” of elections to states, with the proviso that Congress -- and not the President -- can step in and override those laws. As a result, each state has its own set of rules and regulations for elections.

Although only citizens can vote in federal elections, some states require voters to provide proof of citizenship to vote, while others require voters to only sign statements swearing they are citizens. Noncitizens who sign such statements can be charged with crimes and deported. Each state, and sometimes even counties, also have their own rules pertaining to early voting, mail-in and absentee ballots, and counting procedures and schedules, all of which results in a disjointed and incohesive process.

While Trump has alleged that the sketchy conduct resulted in the "stolen election" of 2020 -- which he claims he won -- critics say his effort at election reform is aimed at disenfranchising legitimate immigrant and minority voters to ensure Republican primacy that is being challenged by the demographic changes in American. Trump and his allies in turn allege that Democrats are bringing in hordes of illegal immigrants and registering them to vote in order to perpetuate a Democratic party rule.

Elon Musk is among them. "The goal of the Biden administration was to strategically place illegals in swing states and make their status legal, thereby turning swing states Democrat. The net result would have been permanent one-party rule of the USA, just like what they did in California," the South Africa-born billionaire alleged recently even though Trump acolytes have been unable to prove the charge despite strenuous efforts, ferreting out only a negligible number of bogus voting cases.

While Trump embraced India's biometric push in terms of voter ID, when it come to counting though, he cited Germany and Canada's use of paper ballots, tallied in public by local officials, which he said "substantially reduces the number of disputes as compared to the American patchwork of voting methods that can lead to basic chain-of-custody problems."

Further, while countries like Denmark and Sweden "sensibly" limit mail-in voting to those unable to vote in person and do not count late-arriving votes regardless of the date of postmark, many American elections now feature mass voting by mail, with many officials accepting ballots without postmarks or those received well after Election Day, the EO says, while barring states from counting mail ballots received after Election Day. Currently, 18 states count mail ballots that arrive later so long as they are postmarked by Election Day.

Trump pledged to withhold federal election funding from states that do not comply with the raft of directives included in his order, saying, “Election fraud — you’ve heard the term — we’ll end it, hopefully."