Sec. 2. Findings

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Congress makes the following findings: Article 1, section 4 of the Constitution of the United States clearly demonstrates that the power to make or alter any regulations regarding the time, place, and manner of elections lies with Congress and the States, not with the President. On May 20, 1993, President William J. Clinton signed the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 ( Public Law 103–31 ), which was passed with bipartisan support. On October 29, 2002, President George W.

Bush signed the Help America Vote Act of 2002 ( Public Law 107–252 ), which was passed on an overwhelmingly bipartisan basis. The Help America Vote Act of 2002 established the Election Assistance Commission, an independent and evenly divided bipartisan agency to assist States with new standards and improve election administration. Neither the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 nor the Help America Vote Act of 2002 provide any authority for any of the actions directed by Executive Order 14399 (91 Fed. Reg. 17125) to create State citizenship lists for Federal election purposes based on unreliable Federal databases or to bar the Postal Service from delivering mail ballots unless States use lists provided to them or approved by the Federal Government.

Pennsylvania and New Jersey enacted some of the earliest laws to allow voting away from home in 1813 and 1815 in the context of the War of 1812 and many States granted absentee voting for military service members in 1864 during the Civil War. In the early 20th century, States such as Virginia, Indiana, and Wisconsin enacted absentee voting for several reasons. In 1924, President Calvin Coolidge and First Lady Grace Coolidge voted by mail according to Massachusetts absentee voting procedures from Washington, DC.

All 50 States, the District of Columbia, and territories allow absentee voting. As of March 22, 2026— 28 States (Alaska, Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Montana, Nebraska, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Virginia, Wisconsin, and Wyoming) offer no-excuse absentee voting; and 8 States (California, Colorado, Hawaii, Nevada, Oregon, Utah, Vermont, and Washington) and the District of Columbia provide universal vote-by-mail.

More than 28,000,000 Americans voted by mail or absentee ballot in 2016, over 66,000,000 in 2020 during the COVID–19 pandemic, and over 48,000,000 Americans voted by mail in the 2024 general election. President Donald Trump has voted by mail on at least three occasions by his own admission, including in New York in 2018, Florida in 2020, and again in Florida in 2026. Vote by mail has been used successfully and securely by members of the United States military for many decades and throughout major conflicts.

Hundreds of thousands of members of the United States military and United States citizens living abroad relied on mail-in ballots to cast their vote in 2024 and the Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act ( 52 U.S.C. 20301 et seq. ) requires all 50 States, the District of Columbia, and the territories of American Samoa, Guam, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands to permit covered voters to register to vote absentee, and requires the Federal Government to expedite transmission of completed ballots.

The United States Postal Service is an independent establishment governed by a bipartisan Board of Governors which has the power to appoint the Postmaster General and exercise postal power, and cannot regulate or refuse to carry State-issued mail ballot envelopes at the direction of the President. The Postal Service delivered nearly 100,000,000 ballots for the November 2024 general election and took extraordinary measures to ensure timely delivery of election mail in 2024 and will need to take action in the 2026 election cycle to again ensure timely delivery of election mail, including State-issued mail ballot envelopes.

Executive Order 14399 (91 Fed. Reg. 17125), issued by President Donald J. Trump on March 31, 2026, entitled Ensuring Citizenship Verification and Integrity in Federal Elections , greatly exceeds the authority of the Executive branch, is illegal and unconstitutional, and would disenfranchise tens of millions of American voters.

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