Liberal watchdog groups have warned that former President Donald Trump is plotting to make it harder for people to vote after 2024 and is prepared to discredit the election results if he loses.
The American Civil Liberties Union said in a new report released this week that President Trump and his allies are refusing to accept the results of this year’s presidential election.
Even if he wins, the ACLU said, Americans should expect President Trump will abuse executive power to interfere in our elections, including by prosecuting false allegations of voter fraud, removing voters from voter rolls, and using federal police powers to intimidate local election officials.
It’s one of the strongest bipartisan warnings yet of the possible consequences of a second term for Trump. Anxious Democrats say democracy is on the line, while Republicans counter that new election laws are intended to make it harder to cheat.
The report was released on the eve of the Republican National Convention, which begins in Milwaukee on Monday. The party’s platform says “Republicans will ensure election integrity” and fix “deeply corrupt elections” through laws such as voter ID and citizenship verification.
“It’s no secret that the Fake News Media has relentlessly covered President Trump’s pledge to ensure the integrity of our nation’s elections,” Trump campaign spokeswoman Caroline Leavitt said in a statement. “Voters know that President Trump is the only person who can Make America Great Again,” she said.
Here are three things the ACLU wants from the Trump Administration:
1. Weaponizing the Department of Justice
The ACLU says Trump will use the Department of Justice (DOJ) to pressure states to purge large numbers of voters from their voter rolls, and will ask the DOJ to launch false investigations and prosecutions of alleged voter fraud, as he did after the 2020 election.
During his first term, Trump appointed leaders loyal to him to the Justice Department, and one of his major proposals over the years has been to revise federal guidelines to make it easier to fire nonpartisan civil servants, including those at the Justice Department.
The ACLU said Trump and his allies are likely to use the Justice Department to spread false claims about voter fraud and launch “malicious investigations and prosecutions.”
“Even if these prosecutions ultimately fail and we trust the courts to follow through, the facts of the investigation and prosecution could destroy someone’s life financially and reputationally,” said Mike Zamor, national director of policy and government affairs at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).
“How does that affect people’s willingness to participate?” he asked. “How does that affect their decision-making along the way?”
2. Federal pressure on local election administration
The ACLU has warned that a second Trump administration would use federal police powers to intimidate people at locally run polling places and use federal agencies, including the Department of Justice, to force local governments to remove voters from voter rolls.
In 2020, Trump said he would send sheriffs and other law enforcement officers to polling places to prevent voter fraud, and the Republican National Committee has pledged to deploy thousands of poll watchers across the country. The ACLU has said Trump could send his own law enforcement officers or encourage state governments to send in the National Guard.
Efforts to clean up voter rolls have become a popular tactic on the right. It’s a central theme of a litigation program by the Trump-controlled Republican National Committee, lawsuits brought by right-wing groups like Judicial Watch and grassroots activists conducting their own data analysis.
The ACLU said the effort is driven by Trump’s false claims about voter fraud and that the Trump administration will use its powers to “directly enforce aggressive voter purges.”
3. Repeal of the Motor Voting Act
The main federal law the ACLU says is dangerous is the National Voter Registration Act of 1993, which directs states to make it easy to register to vote, such as by having people check a box when applying for a driver’s license, and lays out how states can remove people from their voter rolls.
President Joe Biden signed an executive order in 2021 expanding voter registration under the law, allowing more people to be registered in tribal communities through the Indian Health Service and for veterans to be registered through VA hospitals. The ACLU predicted that President Trump would repeal the order.
Trump’s allies in the House have already passed a separate bill that would change voter registration laws to make it harder to register, by requiring people to show proof of citizenship before being added to the voter rolls. House Speaker Mike Johnson announced the bill during a visit to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago headquarters in April.
