Washington Attorney General Nick Brown is co-leading a coalition of 23 attorneys general and one state governor in a lawsuit challenging President Donald Trump’s executive order targeting mail-in voting and seeking to establish a national list of verified eligible voters.
Trump signed the order on Tuesday, directing the Department of Homeland Security to work with the Social Security Administration to create a verified voter list for each state. The order also seeks to bar the US Postal Service from sending absentee ballots to anyone not on a state’s approved voter list, and calls for ballots to be sent in secure envelopes with unique barcodes for tracking purposes. The coalition, co-led by Brown and Oregon Attorney General Dan Rayfield, argues the order is unlawful and would force states to act in contradiction to their own voter registration laws, vote-by-mail systems, and voter roll procedures.
Brown was direct in his assessment of the order’s intent. “The president wants to control your vote,” he said. “He wants to tell the Postal Service what ballots they can accept and when. But this is patently unconstitutional.” Rayfield echoed that position. “This attack on the fundamental right of every American to vote has nothing to do with election integrity and everything to do with silencing people so he can ultimately influence election results,” Rayfield said.
Washington and Oregon have decades of experience with mail-in voting. Oregon became the first state to allow it in 2002, with Washington following in 2005. State officials in both states have consistently maintained the security and integrity of their mail-in systems over the more than 20 years since. Washington Secretary of State Steve Hobbs noted that non-citizen voting in the state has been exceedingly rare, with only 15 documented instances between 1982 and 2025.
Trump has long been a vocal critic of mail-in voting, repeatedly claiming without evidence that it is susceptible to widespread fraud. He has also pushed Congress to pass the SAVE Act, which would require voters to present citizenship documents at the time of registration. Brown said the state would not yield on the issue. “Mail-in voting is safe and legal in Washington,” he said. “We will do everything we can to defend it. And come November, despite the president’s lawless threats, we’ll once again use that power to protect our democracy.”
