CREW -- A win against Donald Trump’s attempts to control elections
A win against Donald Trump’s attempts to control elections
Mon, Jan 19 2026 at 9:09 AM
We have a big update for you, Mark.
This month, a federal district court in Washington state ruled against the Trump administration’s effort to exert federal control over elections.
When President Trump issued an extraordinary executive order attempting to seize presidential control over elections—a direct threat to state authority and democratic norms—Oregon, Washington and other states sued to block it.
CREW played a critical role in the legal response, filing amicus briefs on behalf of a bipartisan group of former secretaries of state in three cases challenging the order—including just this week in the First Circuit Court of Appeals, where we’re calling on the court to uphold the district court’s ruling in favor of the states.
And now, another district court has ruled, this time in favor of Washington and Oregon, citing CREW’s brief in concluding that Trump violated the separation of powers with his attempts to seize control of elections.The court explained:
“As noted by amici Bipartisan Former State Secretaries of State, ‘There is no understanding of executive power that grants the President the authority to control the day-to-day actions of the [Election Assistance Commission].'”
Our amicus briefs explain that the Constitution assigns the primary role in election regulation and administration to the states—not the president.
That means Trump’s executive order asserting presidential authority over elections violates the Constitution's key democratic principle of the separation of powers.
Trump’s executive order oversteps his authority by ordering the Election Assistance Commission to unilaterally add new requirements to the federal voter registration form, taking federal control over some voter roll list maintenance, requiring the review and potential decertification of certain voting systems and prohibiting states from processing absentee and mail-in ballots received after Election Day.
While the secretaries of state we represented in our brief may not always have agreed on what constitutes the best election policies, they share a commitment to ensuring that elections are free and fair.
They also agree that the Constitution gives the states, not the president, power over our elections.
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