Pod Insights Civics 101 How President Trump is trying to change elections About this episode In March, President Trump signed an executive order that promises to preserve and protect the integrity of American elections. The data shows the integrity of our election system is intact despite the claims of many politicians and the perception of many voters. So what is the president trying to change about a system that isn't broken? Who will it affect and how much will it cost them? Finally, while Congress and the States are constitutionally-empowered to make election law, the president is not. So... can he?
Our guide to this executive order is Jason Carter of the Carter Center.
CLICK HERE: Visit our website to see all of our episodes, donate to the podcast, sign up for our newsletter, get free educational materials, and more!
To see Civics 101 in book form, check out A User's Guide to Democracy: How America Works by Hannah McCarthy and Nick Capodice, featuring illustrations by Tom Toro.
Check out our other weekly NHPR podcast, Outside/In - we think you'll love it!
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Speaker 00 I don't know what I'm doing.
0:01 Speaker 01 Need a break.
0:02 Speaker 00 Forget it, I quit.
0:03 Speaker 01 Escape to Pluto TV.
0:05 Speaker 02 This is objectively fantastic.
0:07 Speaker 01 Relax into the movies and shows you already know and love, all for free. Shwing! Even our news is uplifting.
0:13 Speaker 03 You stay classy, San Diego.
0:14 Speaker 01 Watch Tommy Boy, Crazy Ex Girlfriend, Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy, The X-Files, Wayne's World, and so much more. We're not worthy! The best things on TV really are free.
0:24 Speaker 02 You just have to know where to look.
0:26 Speaker 01 Escape to Pluto TV. Stream now, pay never.
0:30 Nick Capodice? Para los grandes, para los chicos, para los bajos y los altos, los pacifistas, los valientes, para los optimistas y los pesimistas, los que valoran lo de adentro, para los que están lejos, los que no ven de lejos, y los que no ven de cerca, para los introvertidos y los extrovertidos, para los que piensan y los que hacen, para los que nos mostraron el camino. Coca-Cola, para todos. Compra una Coca-Cola en una tienda cerca de usted.
1:01 Speaker 05 Born in Texas, made in America, that's Valero. Keeping America moving, rain or shine, day or night, 365 days a year. Giving back to our communities and helping businesses thrive. We're proud to fuel the people who keep this country moving. So whether you're exploring new roads or heading down ones you know, we're here, fueling drives coast to coast. Proudly American, proudly getting you where you need to be. Right now, Valero.
1:32 Hannah McCarthy? Hannah McCarthy here. Nick Capodice there. Civics 101, everywhere.
1:41 Hannah McCarthy? We've got an executive order episode for you today, my friends. This is not the first, probably won't be the last, and I'll tell you what, this one is a real can the president do that doozy?
1:52 Speaker 07 Election fraud, you've heard the term. We'll end it, hopefully. This will go a long way toward ending it. There are other steps that we will be taking in the coming weeks, and we think we'll be able to end up getting fair elections.
2:11 Hannah McCarthy? This order, preserving and protecting the integrity of American elections, was issued March 25th. I'm just gonna jump in here and say you should go back
2:20 Nick Capodice? And listen to our episode on the Save Act if you haven't already. It's called fixing a problem that doesn't exist.
2:26 Hannah McCarthy? It sure is. Before we get into the details of this executive order, I'd like to introduce or reintroduce you to Jason Carter.
2:34 Speaker 00 Sure, so my name is Jason Carter. I am a lawyer in Atlanta and I'm also the chair of the Carter Center Board of Trustees.
2:41 Nick Capodice? For those of you who don't know or didn't listen to our Save Act episode, Jason Carter is that Carter. Late President Jimmy Carter's grandson. The Carter Center does a lot of international humanitarian work, including observing and offering feedback on democratic elections. And recently, they started to look at our country's election system, too.
3:04 Hannah McCarthy? Yeah, speaking of integrity, that is something that Jason says the Carter Center is working on. Not so much the integrity of American elections, which he says we already have, more like the integrity of our democracy. Democracy requires trust. So they're working on that.
3:19 Speaker 00 One of the things that we have found is you have to have trusted messengers on all sides, right? And so one of the things that the Carter Center has spent some real time doing is building out its network of individuals from across partisan lines, from across geographic lines, to talk to folks in their communities, right? One of the things that the Carter Center has always been good at and that my grandparents believed in their hearts is that neighbors talking to neighbors is going to be more effective than folks talking on TV or elsewise, right? I mean, that's where trust really comes from, is these communities of care that we all exist in, in our normal lives.
3:59 Nick Capodice? Hang on, what does Jason mean when he says building a network of people talking in communities?
4:04 Speaker 00 Sometimes they're politicians, but sometimes they're not, right? Sometimes they are just individual community leaders. You know, there's a good reason, as a former politician myself, that people don't trust politicians, because they feel like they're in the system and in the system in order to win. But there's a lot of other people who care about that system and have the ability to convey messages that don't necessarily have to be that. Some of them are journalists. We've done a lot with lawyers to make sure that they understand what people's rights are and how to approach these things in court without sort of, you know, damning the system and continuing to build trust. And so that's, that's where we are. There's a large network of people out there that have the ability to really affect this and to rebuild the trust that we're missing.
4:48 Hannah McCarthy? So Jason calls these democracy resilience networks.
4:52 Nick Capodice? Hannah, you must know what this reminds me of.
4:55 Hannah McCarthy? Actually, I do. I told Jason about it.
4:58 Nick Capodice? Well, I'm going to just open this mind meld up to the listener. Everyone, what I'm reminded of here are the four Minutemen. During World War I, the CPI, the Committee on Public Information.
5:09 Hannah McCarthy? AKA the government's wartime propaganda office.
5:12 Nick Capodice? Right. The CPI organized volunteers in states across the country to stand up at movie theaters, churches, labor union meetings, you name it, to give short speeches encouraging their fellow Americans to get behind the war effort.
5:27 Hannah McCarthy? Right. You know, they were people in the community. They were trusted. They were speaking on behalf of America. The difference here being, of course, that this is an attempt to get people behind democracy itself, get them to believe in it, trust it, by hearing from the people who know it well, or even work within it. Okay, so that is in part what the Carter Center is doing. Why are they doing that? Because trust in the system has eroded, due in part to people suggesting it cannot be trusted in its current state. And this brings me to the subject of our episode, President Trump's New Executive Order: Preserving and Protecting the Integrity of American Elections.
6:11 Speaker 00 In this instance, you have the President of the United States making his own view and taking his own power to say, this is how I want this election run. That is a problem.
6:22 Nick Capodice? Isn't that, I mean, Hannah, the Constitution leaves elections up to the states and a little bit to Congress, not the president.
6:32 Hannah McCarthy? Yeah, we're going to get to that. So this executive order comes with a pretty long preamble, if you will. It starts off with, quote, "Despite pioneering self-government, the United States now fails to enforce basic and necessary election protections employed by modern, developed nations, as well as those still developing."
6:52 Nick Capodice? If I may translate?
6:54 Hannah McCarthy? Sure.
6:54 Nick Capodice? Pioneering self-government. So that's basically saying, we did democracy earlier than other countries. The United States now fails, and this one is interesting because he says "now," implying that in the past, we were not failing, to enforce basic and necessary election protections. That kind of feels like he's saying, this should be obvious and easy, people. Employed by modern developed nations as well as those still developing. So basically, other people are doing it and we're not, and that's bad. I'm also glad to see the president use the term "developing nations" as opposed to other ones he's used in the past, because we do not swear on this show.
7:35 Hannah McCarthy? Yeah, so I did think it was interesting, to say the least, that this order references other countries, and it does so by name. Trump brings up election protocol in India, Germany, Sweden, and a handful of other nations. I asked Jason about this. Like, why kick it off this way?
7:55 Speaker 00 It says to me that the president was nervous about what he was doing. It says to me that the president didn't feel comfortable just saying, "I can do this." And so he cited Sweden, he cited Germany. And what he did is he picked the most restrictive aspects of those democracies' ability to count votes and what they do, right? To make it the most restrictive possible.
8:18 Nick Capodice? Wait, like what aspects?
8:20 Hannah McCarthy? Like how India uses a centralized biometric database to verify voter registration eligibility.
8:26 Nick Capodice? Whoa, wait, what?
8:29 Hannah McCarthy? Fingerprints and iris scans.
8:31 Nick Capodice? To prove you are who you say you are?
8:33 Hannah McCarthy? Yeah. Trump references how Sweden limits mail-in voting to people who are abroad or aboard, quote, "a ship in foreign waters," and in either case, you need two witnesses.
8:44 Nick Capodice? Witnesses to watch you vote?
8:46 Hannah McCarthy? Yes.
8:47 Speaker 00 And really, the scary thing about that is that we're not looking at Sweden in terms of a balance of how the election is run.
8:55 Nick Capodice? So in other words, we're not looking at Sweden for ideas on how to make elections more fair, for example, or more democratic.
9:02 Hannah McCarthy? Right. And to be clear, Sweden regularly rates among the most democratic nations on the planet for everything from civil liberties to political rights. Its elections are considered broadly free and fair. To cite Sweden for a voting restriction, as opposed to what makes it a healthier democracy than the United States, might just be telling. Jason sees this executive order's references to things like this as a way to justify what's coming next.
9:37 Nick Capodice? I almost don't want to ask this, Hannah. What is coming next?
9:41 Hannah McCarthy? All right. This executive order says the following. Ready?
9:45 Nick Capodice? Almost never, but this is my job.
9:49 Hannah McCarthy? One major thing is that this order is trying to change the federal voting form to require documentary proof of citizenship.
9:57 Nick Capodice? Huh, isn't that what the SAVE Act is trying to do?
10:02 Hannah McCarthy? Yes and no. The SAVE Act, again, listen to our episode on it to learn more, would require proof of citizenship to register to vote, full stop. It's Congress's attempt to change an election rule in the US, which they are constitutionally empowered to do. This executive order is commanding an independent federal agency called the EAC, the Election Assistance Commission, to change a male voter registration form. The big difference here, Nick, is that the president is not explicitly constitutionally empowered to do that, which is part of the reason a federal judge blocked this part of the order. That same judge blocked another part of the order that tells the federal voter registration agencies
10:46 Hannah McCarthy? to assess the citizenship of people enrolled in public assistance programs before they give them a registration form. That judge's reasoning was that this is an overreach of presidential powers. Now, this order packs in a lot more than that, so I'm gonna keep going. It orders the EAC to recertify voting systems.
11:09 Nick Capodice? And what does that mean?
11:10 Hannah McCarthy? Okay. In some states, and some listeners will be very familiar with this, you vote using a touchscreen and then get a paper printout of your vote. Now, that piece of paper has a QR code or a barcode on it, and that code is then scanned, and your vote is counted.
11:27 Nick Capodice? And Trump wants the machines that do this to be recertified? So is he just telling the EAC to give them all a checkup?
11:34 Hannah McCarthy? Nope. We have voluntary voting system guidelines in the US. Keep voluntary in mind. We are going to come back to that. Trump is ordering the EAC to change those guidelines, specifically to say that states cannot use the barcode thing anymore, except for accessibility purposes.
11:54 Nick Capodice? Then how can the EAC recertify those machines?
11:57 Hannah McCarthy? They can't. Not as they are right now.
12:01 Nick Capodice? Uh huh. What am I missing here?
12:03 Hannah McCarthy? The states or counties that use barcodes either have to update their machines or replace them. In Georgia, for example, where Jason Carter is from, and I promise we will hear from him again soon, the whole state uses this system. The cost to change that system is estimated at around $66 million. Georgia's Senate, by the way, had already voted to ban their QR code system, but they did not allocate money for it.
12:29 Nick Capodice? But why exactly? Like, what is wrong with the barcodes?
12:33 Hannah McCarthy? This barcode system has had naysayers across the political spectrum, but in 2020, conspiracy theorists claimed, without evidence, that these barcodes had been manipulated. The idea is that the machine itself is hacked, and the vote will go to another candidate.
12:51 Nick Capodice? You know, you could have just said 2020 and left it at that, Hannah.
12:54 Hannah McCarthy? Election officials say that the system is secure, accurate, and they regularly test it. But a lot of those same officials want the barcodes gone because so many voters don't trust them.
13:07 Nick Capodice? And this executive order forces that action?
13:10 Hannah McCarthy? Forces that action, and in no way indicates that the federal government will help pay for it.
13:15 Nick Capodice? And reinforces the idea that this system is not secure.
13:19 Hannah McCarthy? Yes. There's more. This order does not say the government will help pay for these changes. Election stuff is expensive for states. They often rely on grants from the federal government to help them pay for it. And this order, Nick, tells the government to prioritize states who comply when they're passing out grants. In other words, no money to help you comply, and the threat of no money if you don't.
13:47 Nick Capodice? So states don't absolutely have to comply?
13:49 Hannah McCarthy? This is more like a guidelines than an actual rules situation. It's voluntary, remember? And how do you get states to do something voluntarily?
13:59 Nick Capodice? Hannah, you ask them if they want all that pretty, pretty money.
14:02 Hannah McCarthy? Yeah. I'm gonna bring Jason back in for a moment here.
14:05 Speaker 00 There's only a certain number of ways that the president has to enforce that executive order. And so what the president is saying is, I'm actually intent on executing on this order. The power that he has is the power of the purse at this point, and so he wants to use that power and bring it to bear to get to change the rules of the game.
14:25 Nick Capodice? But the president doesn't have the power of the purse.
14:28 Hannah McCarthy? That's what I said. And Jason knows that. He's more referencing the fact that this order firmly suggests withholding federal funds for states that do not comply with it. Now, is the president allowed to say who does or does not get money?
14:44 Speaker 00 So, I mean, that's a good question, right? I mean, constitutionally speaking, the Supreme Court has to say whether the president can do this or not. So, you know, in my view, the Constitution requires the elections to be run by the states. There is some role for the federal government, as we've already discussed, because the federal government stepped in, for example, with the Voting Rights Act of 1965, NVRA, other rules that the federal government has helped to expand and make it easier for people to vote. Can the president do this without Congress? I don't think so, because of what you described in terms of whether, you know, Congress has the ability to... Congress, in fact, to your point, holds the purse strings under the Constitution.
15:24 Hannah McCarthy? So basically, we'll see. All right, moving on. This order tells the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Government Efficiency, AKA Doge Administrator, AKA Elon Musk, to review voter files and voter list maintenance records alongside immigration databases.
15:40 Nick Capodice? Is it boring if I keep asking why?
15:43 Hannah McCarthy? It isn't. But I am gonna give us all a quick break, just in case it is.
15:49 Nick Capodice? Before that break, unless the listeners think me capable of a single boring act, can never happen. A reminder that Hannah and I wrote a book, and that book is there to tell you all about how things are supposed to happen. It is called A User's Guide to Democracy: How America Works, and it is a reminder of what democracy is. Isn't that something? You can get it wherever books are sold.
16:23 Nick Capodice? There is nothing quite like having stuff in your closet that you love and you know you can count on for any occasion, except maybe giving someone else that feeling. And this holiday season, Quince is where I'm finding those pieces. Quince makes elevated everyday essentials using premium materials like Mongolian cashmere, organic cotton, and it is priced 50 to 80% less than similar brands. They work directly with ethical factories that cut out the middleman, so you get luxury quality pieces without the luxury price tag. As this lovely fall is winding to a close and we slouch into winter, I wish more than
17:03 Nick Capodice? anything, someone had gifted me a yak wool hoodie. I'm dead serious. It's good enough for the yak. I mean, it works really well for the yak, right? It would work for me. And it looks hot. So give the gift of quality this holiday season. Download the Quince app for app exclusive offers, or go to quince.com. Get free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. Now available in Canada and the UK as well. And last thing, when Quince asks where you heard about them, let them know it was Civics 101. It's the best way to support the show. All right.
17:43 Nick Capodice? Haven't you out there ever Googled your own name? Like, actually done it? You'll find your address, your phone number, maybe even that police report from the time you went to see Rain Man in the movie theater, but you were underage? Maybe that one's just me. But here's the thing. There are companies called data brokers whose entire business model is collecting your personal information and selling it to advertisers, to strangers, sometimes to people running scams. And once your data's out there, it just keeps circulating. That is where Incogni comes in. Incogni contacts data brokers on your behalf and sends them removal requests over and over, so your info doesn't just pop right back up. You set it up once, and they keep working in the background.
18:28 Nick Capodice? You can even track the progress on a dashboard. And for our listeners, we have an exclusive 60% off an annual Incogni plan. Just go to incogni.com/civics or use the code civics at checkout. There's a link in the episode description. Remember, they can't harm you if they can't find you.
18:48 Speaker 05 Priceline Negotiator. It's me, the Priceline Negotiator. We don't need the jingle twice. What about a third time? Stop it. This is about vacation inflation and how Priceline negotiates amazing deals on hotels, flights, and rental cars. Seems like they just started. Yeah, but I didn't mention that you can save up to 60% off hotels in the Priceline app. Time to read the timeline. Fine. No one deals more deals than Priceline. Please stop. Priceline. Touche. Priceline. Priceline.
19:22 Hannah McCarthy? We're back. Nick, before the break, you were asking, why? Why would Trump want Homeland Security and Elon Musk to review voter lists and immigration databases?
19:32 Nick Capodice? I mean, I can guess, Hannah.
19:33 Hannah McCarthy? Together with the Attorney General, it is all about finding and stopping non-citizen registration and voting. Listen to the Save Act episode for more on that. I'm not going to get into it all now. All right, moving on. The order says states that count ballots received after Election Day will be penalized. Basically, we'll have funds withheld.
19:53 Nick Capodice? Isn't this something that happens all the time, Hannah? This is why we can't know the final ballot tally on Election Day? Mail-in ballots have to be postmarked by Election Day, but it takes the postal service a while to deliver them because they haven't invented teleportation yet.
20:08 Hannah McCarthy? 18 states currently allow for counting mail-in ballots if they arrive after Election Day, as long as they are postmarked by Election Day. Now, the order says, quote, "This is like allowing persons who arrive three days after Election Day, perhaps after a winner has been declared, to vote in person at a former voting precinct, which would be absurd," unquote.
20:30 Nick Capodice? Well, that would be absurd, but mail-in ballots aren't like that at all.
20:35 Hannah McCarthy? They are not, at all.
20:41 Hannah McCarthy? All right, here we go. The order asks the Attorney General to create information-sharing agreements with state election officials. The idea is to alert the DOJ to all suspected violations of election laws.
20:54 Nick Capodice? If I've learned one thing from police procedurals, it's that state law enforcement tends to say something snarky when the feds show up.
21:01 Hannah McCarthy? I'll be honest, I am nowhere near an expert on the machinations and legality of state-federal information sharing, especially when it comes to criminal investigations. But I do know that this kind of information sharing is often largely voluntary, especially if we are talking about, quote-unquote, "suspected violations," before we know whether a federal crime has actually been committed. I also know that states push back against this kind of thing on the grounds of privacy concerns and resisting government coercion.
21:29 Nick Capodice? It's federalism, baby.
21:31 Hannah McCarthy? Yeah, and this is another one where Trump tells the AG to consider withholding funds if a state says, "No way, no how." Okay, the order also bans non-citizens from being involved in administering federal elections.
21:43 Nick Capodice? Do non-citizens administer elections?
21:47 Hannah McCarthy? Most states already have laws prohibiting anyone who isn't a qualified, aka, citizen voter from being involved. This part of the order says that non-citizens cannot access, quote, "election equipment, ballots, or any other relevant materials used in the conduct of any federal election." So on its face, that means non-citizens cannot be poll workers or work for election agencies. But pro-democracy groups are already raising concerns about non-citizens who, for example, work at companies that make election materials, or who work in buildings that become polling places on Election Day. We're talking schools or city halls. Does physical proximity to polling places count?
22:29 Hannah McCarthy? Unclear.
22:33 Hannah McCarthy? Last thing. The order tells the AG and the Treasury to prioritize prosecuting foreign nationals who donate to campaigns.
22:41 Nick Capodice? Isn't that already illegal?
22:43 Hannah McCarthy? Yep.
22:44 Nick Capodice? All right.
22:45 Hannah McCarthy? All right, back to Jason Carter. So Jason looks at the SAVE Act. Again, go check out that episode to understand what I'm talking about. And then he looks at this executive order, and he's thinking about democracy. And here is how he sees it.
22:58 Speaker 00 It's one thing to have the federal government do a power grab over our election system. It is an entirely different thing to have a single human being who's the current leader of the country making a direct power grab around the elections. When the President of the United States, and this is true in any country, when they start to say, "I, as the President, have the right to change or address these rules without the input from Congress, without taking it to the states," that's very scary.
23:28 Nick Capodice? Hannah, I'm curious about whether this has happened before. Have any other Presidents signed executive orders on elections before?
23:36 Hannah McCarthy? I did a little research on this one. In recent history, Bill Clinton signed an order to help with the implementation of the National Voter Registration Act. That is the act that lets us register to vote when we get our license and tells states they have to accept mail-in ballots. Barack Obama had an order establishing the Presidential Commission on Election Administration. It was temporary. It assessed our then-system and made recommendations to improve online registration, poll access, outdated machines. Biden had an order, Trump got rid of it, to facilitate voter registration and education.
24:10 Nick Capodice? Did you find anything like this, though?
24:13 Hannah McCarthy? It did not.
24:18 Hannah McCarthy? So, look, I already told you that a judge blocked some parts of this order, but many parts of it remain up in the air. Can the President order all these executive agencies to target non-citizens, withhold federal funding, decertify voting machines, create new standards and high cost for states? Well, he did. Will election officials comply? That remains to be seen. What I do know is that we have an elections clause in the Constitution. I know it leaves the time, place, and manner of elections up to the states.
24:58 Hannah McCarthy? I know it gives Congress the power to make and change federal elections regulations. And I know that the president is not in the elections clause at all.
25:11 Nick Capodice? I'm an executive order and I pretty much just happen.
25:15 Hannah McCarthy? All the more reason to pay attention.
25:18 Nick Capodice? Is that it, Hannah?
25:19 Hannah McCarthy? Till it isn't.
25:38 Hannah McCarthy? That does it for this episode. It was made by me, Hannah McCarthy, with Nick Capodice. Rebecca Lavoie is our executive producer. Christina Phillips is our senior producer, and Marina Hanke is our producer. Special thanks to Taylor Quimby for his edits on this episode. He is the executive producer of another NHPR podcast. It's wonderful. It's called Outside In. Go check it out. Music in this episode from Epidemic Sound. You can find everything we have ever made at our website, civics101podcast.org. And while you're there, you can ask us a question. We might just make an episode in reply. Civics 101 is a production of NHPR, New Hampshire Public Radio.
26:33 Speaker 05 Did you know that if your spouse goes missing and you don't tell anyone, that's not necessarily a crime? That surprising fact is at the heart of the brand new season of Bear Brook, the critically acclaimed true crime podcast from New Hampshire Public Radio. I'm your host, Jason Moon. In this season, Bear Brook investigates another New Hampshire mystery. A Christmas tree farmer with dementia vanishes. His wife never reports him missing. Can he still be found? Don't miss it. Follow Bear Brook wherever you get your podcasts.
27:04 Speaker 01 Forget it, I quit. Escape to Pluto TV.
27:08 Speaker 02 This is objectively fantastic.
27:10 Speaker 01 Relax into the movies and shows you already know and love, all for free. Shwing! Even our news is uplifting. You stay classy, San Diego. Watch Tommy Boy, Crazy Ex Girlfriend, Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy, The X-Files, Wayne's World, and so much more. We're not worthy! The best things on TV really are free.
27:27 Speaker 02 You just have to know where to look.
27:29 Speaker 01 Escape to Pluto TV. Stream now, pay never.
27:33 Speaker 03 Para los grandes, para los chicos, para los bajos y los altos, los pacifistas, los valientes. Para los optimistas y los pesimistas, los que valoran lo de adentro. Para los que están lejos, los que no ven de lejos, y los que no ven de cerca. Para los introvertidos y los extrovertidos. Para los que piensan y los que hacen. Para los que nos mostraron el camino. Coca-Cola. Para todos. Compra una Coca-Cola en una tienda cerca de usted.
Previous Fixing a problem that doesn't exist Next What is the Alien Enemies Act? Page updated November 3, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated