The Claim

Implemented nationwide election integrity measures through executive action, banning foreign nationals from election interference, strengthening voter citizenship verification, prosecuting non-citizen voting, requiring voter-verifiable paper ballot records, and ensuring state-by-state compliance with federal law.

The Claim, Unpacked

What is literally being asserted?

That the administration, through executive action, accomplished six things: (1) banned foreign nationals from election interference, (2) strengthened voter citizenship verification, (3) prosecuted non-citizen voting, (4) required voter-verifiable paper ballot records, (5) ensured state-by-state compliance with federal law, and (6) “implemented” all of this “nationwide.” The word “implemented” implies these measures are operational and producing effects.

What is being implied but not asserted?

That foreign nationals were previously free to interfere in elections and this administration stopped them. That non-citizen voting was a significant problem requiring new measures. That paper ballots were not already in widespread use. That the executive branch has the constitutional authority to mandate how states run their elections. That all of these measures are in effect and producing the intended results. The framing implies a comprehensive overhaul of election administration that made elections safer than they were before.

What is conspicuously absent?

That foreign nationals were already banned from voting (since 1996) and from making campaign contributions (since 1974). That non-citizen voting is vanishingly rare — Heritage Foundation’s own database documents only 77 cases over 24 years. That approximately 98% of votes in the 2024 election were already cast on paper. That three federal courts have blocked key provisions of the executive order as unconstitutional. That the president has no constitutional authority over election administration — that power belongs to state legislatures and Congress. That the SAVE Act, the legislative vehicle for proof-of-citizenship requirements, has not been enacted as of March 2026. That the DOJ’s campaign to obtain state voter rolls has been rejected by courts in multiple jurisdictions.

Evidence Assessment

Established Facts

The administration issued Executive Order 14248 on March 25, 2025, titled “Preserving and Protecting the Integrity of American Elections.” The EO directed the Election Assistance Commission to require documentary proof of citizenship on the federal voter registration form, required federal agencies to share citizenship data with states, directed the AG to prioritize prosecution of non-citizen voting, required voting systems to provide voter-verifiable paper records, set a deadline for mail-in ballots to be received by Election Day, and threatened to withhold federal funding from non-compliant states. [^235-a1]

Foreign nationals were already banned from voting in federal elections under 18 U.S.C. 611, enacted in 1996. The Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 (IIRIRA) made it a federal crime — punishable by up to one year in prison — for any non-citizen to vote in a federal election. Additionally, unlawful voting is a deportable offense. This prohibition has been in effect for nearly 30 years. The EO did not create this ban; it already existed. [^235-a2]

Foreign nationals were already banned from making campaign contributions and expenditures under 52 U.S.C. 30121. The Federal Election Campaign Act has prohibited foreign national contributions since 1974, expanded in 2002 by the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (McCain-Feingold) to cover expenditures, independent expenditures, electioneering communications, and donations to state/local races. The claim to have “banned foreign nationals from election interference” restates a prohibition that has existed for decades. [^235-a3]

Non-citizen voting is vanishingly rare by every available measure. The Brennan Center’s 2017 study of 42 jurisdictions covering 23.5 million votes in the 2016 election found only 30 cases referred for investigation — 0.0001% of votes. Heritage Foundation’s own Election Fraud Cases database documents only 77 instances of non-citizen voting between 1999 and 2023 across the entire country. Utah’s comprehensive 2025-2026 review of over 2 million registered voters found exactly one confirmed non-citizen registration and zero instances of non-citizen voting. The DOJ under Trump has identified roughly 30 people charged with non-citizen voting, some with cases stretching back to 2011. [^235-a4]

Approximately 98% of votes in the 2024 general election were already cast on paper or had paper audit trails. According to data from Verified Voting and the EAC’s 2024 Election Administration and Voting Survey, over 98% of election jurisdictions used voting equipment that either has voters mark a paper ballot or produces an auditable paper record. This was up from 93% in 2020 and 82% in 2016 — a progression driven by state-level decisions and bipartisan election security efforts, not by this executive order. [^235-a5]

Three federal courts have blocked key provisions of EO 14248 as unconstitutional. On April 24, 2025, the D.C. District Court in LULAC v. Executive Office of the President issued a preliminary injunction blocking the documentary proof-of-citizenship requirement. On June 13, 2025, the Massachusetts District Court in California v. Trump blocked additional provisions including citizenship documentation requirements and database-sharing mandates. On October 31, 2025, the D.C. court permanently struck down the proof-of-citizenship provision, finding the president lacks authority to unilaterally alter election procedures. The voting systems certification provisions were also blocked in Washington v. Trump. [^235-a6]

The president has no constitutional authority over state election administration. Under Article I, Section 4 of the Constitution (the Elections Clause), states have primary authority over the “Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections.” Congress — not the president — has the power to override state regulations by establishing uniform rules. The Supreme Court in Arizona v. Inter Tribal Council of Arizona (2013) held that the NVRA preempts state proof-of-citizenship requirements for the federal voter registration form, directly contradicting the EO’s central mandate. [^235-a7]

The DOJ has sued over 20 states for refusing to hand over unredacted voter rolls, and courts have rejected these demands. Since September 2025, the DOJ has filed suit against at least 29 states and D.C. for declining to provide unredacted voter registration data including driver’s license and partial Social Security numbers. Federal courts in California and Oregon have rejected the DOJ’s claims. In January 2026, a federal judge dismissed the DOJ’s effort to obtain voter data from California. [^235-a8]

Strong Inferences

The claim presents restated existing law as new “measures.” Banning foreign nationals from election interference, prohibiting non-citizen voting, and requiring paper ballot records were already accomplished through existing federal law (18 U.S.C. 611, 52 U.S.C. 30121), the NVRA, and bipartisan state-level election security improvements. The EO largely restated or attempted to expand enforcement of existing prohibitions rather than creating new protections. [^235-a9]

The word “implemented” is misleading given that key provisions have been enjoined. Three federal courts have blocked the EO’s core operative provisions — documentary proof of citizenship, voting systems recertification, and federal funding conditions. A measure that has been blocked by courts has not been “implemented” in any meaningful sense. The gap between “issued an executive order” and “implemented nationwide measures” is enormous. [^235-a10]

The EO’s “compliance” framework constitutes federal coercion of state election administration. By threatening to withhold federal funding — including law enforcement grants — from states that do not comply with executive directives on election administration, the EO raises Tenth Amendment concerns about federal coercion. Multiple courts have flagged this as constitutionally problematic. The phrase “ensuring state-by-state compliance” implies that states are subordinate to presidential directives on election administration, which is constitutionally backwards. [^235-a11]

The prosecution effort has confirmed, not refuted, the rarity of non-citizen voting. Despite directing the DOJ to prioritize these prosecutions and deploying DOGE resources to cross-reference databases, the administration has identified only a handful of cases — roughly 30 people charged, many with cases predating this administration. This is consistent with decades of evidence that non-citizen voting is not a systemic problem. The prosecutorial apparatus is vastly disproportionate to the scale of the actual issue. [^235-a12]

What the Evidence Shows

Executive Order 14248 was a sweeping attempt to federalize election administration through presidential directive — an approach that three federal courts have found unconstitutional. The order’s central provisions — requiring documentary proof of citizenship on the federal voter registration form, mandating voting systems recertification, and conditioning federal funding on state compliance — have been blocked by injunctions in the District of Columbia, Massachusetts, and Washington state. The D.C. court’s October 2025 permanent injunction explicitly found that the president lacks authority to unilaterally alter election procedures.

The claim’s individual elements are either restatements of existing law or descriptions of blocked measures. Foreign nationals have been banned from voting since 1996 and from campaign contributions since 1974. Non-citizen voting has been a federal crime for three decades, and every systematic effort to quantify it — including the Heritage Foundation’s own database — confirms it occurs at rates so low as to be statistically negligible. Paper ballots were already used by approximately 98% of jurisdictions before this EO was issued. The DOJ’s aggressive campaign to obtain state voter rolls has been rejected by courts in multiple jurisdictions.

The one genuinely new action the administration took was directing the DOJ to prioritize prosecution of non-citizen voting and deploying federal resources to cross-reference databases for potential cases. But this effort has produced only a handful of prosecutions, confirming rather than contradicting the existing evidence that non-citizen voting is vanishingly rare. Meanwhile, the voter verification expansion through the SAVE system — analyzed in Item 20 — has produced documented false positives flagging U.S. citizens as potential non-citizens, with one Texas county reporting that approximately a quarter of flagged voters were incorrectly identified.

The SAVE Act — the legislative vehicle that would actually impose documentary proof-of-citizenship requirements through Congress rather than executive fiat — passed the House in February 2026 but faces an uncertain path in the Senate. Its potential passage would represent the first legitimate congressional action on this front, but it has not been enacted as of March 2026.

The Bottom Line

The claim that the administration “implemented nationwide election integrity measures” is mostly false. What actually happened is that the president issued an executive order attempting to seize control of election administration from states and Congress — and federal courts have blocked the key provisions as unconstitutional. The specific sub-claims are either restatements of laws that have existed for decades (foreign national voting ban, foreign contribution ban), descriptions of conditions that already existed (98% paper ballot usage), or characterizations of actions that courts have prevented from taking effect (citizenship verification requirements, voting systems recertification, federal funding coercion). The one area where the administration has acted — prioritizing non-citizen voting prosecutions — has produced only a handful of cases, inadvertently confirming the vanishingly low incidence of the problem the EO purported to solve. An executive order that has been largely blocked by courts does not constitute “implementation,” and restating existing law does not constitute a new “measure.”