On March twenty fifth, President Trump signed Executive Order 14248, Preserving and Defending the Integrity of American Elections. The Order outlined a number of necessities below federal legislation that have to be upheld: guaranteeing solely U.S. residents can vote, compliance with the Voluntary Voting System Pointers 2.0 (VVSG), upholding the requirement of the Elections Help Fee’s (EAC) certification of voting programs, and amending VVSG 2.0 to require a voter-verifiable poll.
Anticipated authorized challenges from Democrat Secretaries of State and non-governmental organizations have up to now netted blended outcomes. On April twenty fourth, within the consolidated case League of United Latin American Citizens v. Executive Office of the President, US District Courtroom Decide Colleen Kollar-Kotelly positioned a short lived injunction on Sections 2(a) and a couple of(d), which requires citizenship proof within the nationwide mail voter registration type and requires businesses to “assess citizenship previous to offering” a voter registration type to “enrollees of public help applications.”
The choose’s order let stand three sections that allowed unqualified voters to be recognized and to limit counting of ballots to these acquired on or earlier than Election Day. All different sections stay in impact.
Part 4(b)(i) of the Order states that “the amended tips and different steerage shall present that voting programs shouldn’t use a poll wherein a vote is contained inside a barcode or quick-response code within the vote counting course of…” This part can have extreme penalties for a number of states corresponding to Georgia, South Carolina, California, Nevada, Texas, Tennessee, Indiana, Ohio, New Jersey, and extra.
All of these states, in totality or in some half, make the most of poll marking units (BMD) that retailer the voter document on both a QR code or a barcode. For instance, in line with Verified Voting, Texas solely has 12.4% hand-marked paper ballots and 87.5% BMDs. California has 59.7% hand-marked versus 40.3% BMDs.
South Carolina, residence to Senator Lindsey Graham, has 0% hand-marked paper ballots and 100% BMDs. Georgia, too, is 100% BMDs.
Even worse, Louisiana in its entirety and Nevada nearly solely (95.6%) use Direct Recording Digital programs (DRE) which don’t have any bodily poll, however print a paper receipt to make sure you your picks had been appropriately tabulated.
At the least one state is scurrying to determine methods to take care of the Government Order’s necessities.
Clinton W. Lancaster, an legal professional who represented President Trump within the 2020 election problem and sued Hunter Biden for little one help, had reached out to the SOS’s Workplace to inquire as to how they deliberate to adjust to President Trump’s order. When his inquiry was not answered, he despatched a FOIA request.
Within the responsive information, a few of emails allude to chaos behind the scenes in Arkansas’s Workplace of the Secretary of State. A lobbyist for ES&S wrote the secretary and defined that they would want to buy Poll On Demand (BOD) printers from ES&S. ES&S has a patent on the paper required to make use of the ES&S tabulators, and solely their BOD printer can correctly print to that paper.
In an article for Arkansas1st.com, Lancaster wrote:
Kevin Niehaus, Chief of Employees for Secretary Cole Jester, says that he doesn’t assume the state can cowl the prices of all of the wanted printers, indicating that the Secretary’s workplace doesn’t have a adequate finances appropriation from the lately adjourned 2025 Legislative Session to buy the BOD printers.
To that, ESS’s lobbyist seemingly admits that there isn’t any viable resolution for compliance apart from ESS’s proprietary and high-cost BOD printers and that it doesn’t have another certifiable resolution in hand. He asks, “what ought to ESS be pondering when it comes to compliance with the necessities.” The response is telling.
Niehaus says, “at this level I’m not fully sure. I feel we’re taking a look at a paper poll election in Arkansas subsequent yr as a result of there doesn’t appear to be a viable resolution from ES&S and no person is happy about that, particularly Cole.”
Georgia has but to budge regardless of new state legislation
Within the controversial swing state of Georgia, officers are dragging their ft to implement hand-marked paper ballots, as required within the Order. However Georgia is double-dipping of their defiance: the Georgia legislature handed Senate Bill 181 in Could of 2024 that required QR codes now not be used to tabulate votes.
Part 7 of SB181 reads:
The official tabulation depend of any poll scanner shall be based mostly upon the textual content portion or the machine mark, offered that such mark clearly denotes the elector’s choice and does use a QR code, bar code, or related coding, of such ballots and never any machine coding that could be printed on such ballots.
However similar to the aftermath of Dr. J Alex Halderman’s explosive report and testimony in federal court detailing and demonstrating extreme vulnerabilities within the state’s voting system whereas urging Georgia officers to no less than carry out safety updates, Georgia election officers have ignored that recommendation, the legislation, and the manager order.
