This article was first published by the New Jersey Monitor
Acting U.S. Attorney for the District of New Jersey Alina Habba recently introduced the “election integrity task force,” a team of federal prosecutors dedicated to enforcing President Trump’s sweeping and unlawful executive order on elections.
Notably, a federal district court has already temporarily blocked key aspects of the executive order, including a provision intended to require voters to show a passport or other citizenship documentation to register to vote in federal elections.
Other components of the executive order, which are also the subject of ongoing legal challenges, would give Elon Musk’s DOGE and the Department of Homeland Security full access to voter files and sensitive voter list maintenance records from every state; penalize states, like New Jersey, that count valid and timely-cast mail-in ballots received after Election Day; decertify voting machines across the country; and more. Through this executive order, President Trump seeks to seize control of the country’s election infrastructure, usurping the powers of Congress, the states, and the Election Assistance Commission – an independent, bipartisan federal agency.
Like the executive order, the task force is not aimed at a real problem, and instead is premised on false, nativist, and thoroughly discredited narratives about fraudulent voting.
New Jersey elections are fair and secure, and extensive research shows that voter fraud is exceptionally rare. Instead of committing itself to the critical task of protecting the right to vote, the task force trades on the myth of fraud to stoke fear and prejudice while establishing a pretext for voter suppression.
In addition to purportedly addressing phantom issues like registration fraud, non-citizen voting, and double voting, the task force claims to promote “information sharing” to “remove individuals who are not eligible to vote from State voter lists.” This proposal raises serious privacy concerns and threatens aggressive voter purges, which often rely on outdated and unreliable information and ultimately disenfranchise eligible voters.
State and federal laws and the Constitution place firm limits on who can make the types of election administration changes President Trump’s executive order seeks to enact, as well as when and how. The ACLU-NJ and our partners are ready to enforce these protections and to defend the right to vote against new attacks, including from the Trump Administration and the task force.
We will also keep working to advance policies, like the New Jersey Voter Empowerment Act, that provide essential tools for eradicating discrimination in voting. This bill would restore and modernize the protections of the federal Voting Rights Act, which have been steadily eroded in recent decades.
The right to vote is the foundation on which all our other rights and liberties rest. Whether bluster or blueprint, the task force is a threat to our democracy. The ACLU-NJ will continue to fight for voters whatever comes our way.
