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LINCOLN — Nebraska Secretary of State Bob Evnen said Wednesday that President Donald Trump’s new executive order to restrict voting by mail and create a national voter list would not change how Nebraska handles the state’s May 12 primary election.
This matters because Nebraska’s first wave of mail-in ballots for the primary will be sent to voters starting Monday. Evnen did not make the same assurances for the general election.
Trump signed an order Tuesday directing the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the Social Security Administration to compile a list of voting-age American citizens in each state and share it with state election officials. The order also requires the U.S. Postal Service to send and receive only ballots by mail sent with tracking barcodes.
The push is likely to face major legal challenges nationally, as it represents an escalation of Trump’s efforts to reshape elections, which election experts have said is unconstitutional.
“I join the president in making election integrity a priority,” Evnen told the Examiner in a statement. “Over the coming months, we will continue to monitor and participate in how the implementation of the executive order might impact the November 3rd general election … We will comment further as circumstances warrant.”
The executive order directs the Justice Department and other federal agencies to withhold federal funds from noncompliant states and localities “where such withholding is authorized by law.”
The order requires Homeland Security to work with states to supplement or suggest changes to each state’s citizenship list. Federal officials also would be required to let individuals access their own records and update or correct them ahead of elections. So far, Nebraska is one of a dozen states that have handed over their complete voter lists to the DOJ.
Five other states have sent only data already publicly available. The DOJ has sued 29 states and D.C. for the information. Some of the cases have been dismissed, and the DOJ is appealing.
The Nebraska Supreme Court heard oral arguments this week in a lawsuit that had sought to stop the state from handing over potentially sensitive parts of its voter data to the U.S. Department of Justice.
Evnen gave the feds the data in February.
Daniel Gutman, one of the attorneys for voting advocacy group Common Cause and Omaha voter Dawn Essink, said in court that while the federal government creates the “sensitive information” in the voter files, it had not previously centralized a complete federal “profile” of state voters.
Evnen, the state’s top election official, is currently being challenged on his right flank by Scott Petersen for the Republican nomination for Secretary of State. Petersen, an Omaha businessman, said in a statement on social media that “this is what I voted for.”
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“Election integrity starts with verifying eligibility … the latest Executive Order strengthens citizenship verification in federal elections, an important step toward restoring confidence,” Petersen said on social media.
Evnen has spent much of the past year balancing efforts to defend the state’s elections that his office administers while responding to the concerns of some Republicans and Trump’s administration over election integrity since Trump lost the 2020 presidential election to President Joe Biden.
The push from some populist parts of the GOP for additional election security measures is a national framing of the electoral process that some election experts have warned could undermine public trust.
Election officials from Arizona and Oregon have pledged to immediately challenge Trump’s new executive order in court. Neighboring Colorado has signaled plans to sue, according to Votebeat. Marc Elias, a Democratic voting rights litigator, promised to fight the executive order.
Homeland Security, which operates the SAVE system that it uses to check for noncitizens has previously invited state leaders to run state voter rolls through it. The SAVE database has made numerous mistakes, according to a ProPublica and Texas Tribune investigation.
The Justice Department has asked states for detailed information from state voter rolls, including names, dates of birth, driver’s license numbers and the last four digits of voters’ Social Security numbers, saying it wants the information to ensure accurate voter registrations. The executive order does not explicitly mandate the creation of a voter list. It essentially marks an effort by the White House to create a national database of adult U.S. citizens.
Democratic-led states and some led by Republicans have declined or are pushing back against federal efforts to gather the data, with some citing state laws protecting residents’ data and privacy.
Last year, the Trump administration unilaterally attempted to impose a proof-of-citizenship requirement for voting in federal elections using an executive order that was blocked in federal court. Trump has pushed Congress to pass the SAVE America Act, which would require people seeking to register to vote to produce documents proving their citizenship, such as a passport or birth certificate.
The U.S. Senate is still debating the elections-related bill, but it appears unlikely to secure enough support to overcome a filibuster.
