Credit: (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)As Donald Trump and his Republican allies step up their drive to quash Americans’ voting rights, New Jersey democracy advocates are gaining confidence in a string of court rulings that have blocked him so far. Still, some say the state — a leader on voter access and election administration — potentially has much to lose in the lead-up to November’s midterm elections.
The U.S. Supreme Court’s rejection on June 30 of Trump’s attempt to end birthright citizenship set off a fresh wave of attempts to restrict voting. If Trump fails, he risks losing his party’s hold on Congress and his political agenda.
On Thursday, Trump finished dismantling the bipartisan U.S. Election Assistance Commission, which distributed more than $1 billion in election security grants to states from 2018-2025, according to the Bipartisan Policy Center, a Washington-based think tank.
Also last week, the U.S. Department of Justice confirmed that it had sent letters to election officials in every state threatening criminal charges if non-citizens vote or remain registered, according to The Associated Press. In a separate move, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security declared that certain financial assistance will go only to states that follow a 2025 Trump executive order to confirm voters’ and poll workers’ citizenship, according to federal grant-related documents.
Finally, House Speaker Mike Johnson responded to a Trump demand to require Americans to register at election offices with proof of citizenship — even if they are on voter rolls. Johnson, a Louisiana Republican who sets the floor agenda in the chamber, said he plans to try to get the House to pass such legislation as part of budget reconciliation. That process requires a financial element, typically involving spending and debt. It is unknown whether the legislation would have such an angle.
“They are thinking about every possible avenue that they have to try to skew the election to give them the best possible odds, because they know based on policy alone, and how the American people are feeling alone, they’re going to get crushed,” Rep. Rob Menendez (D-8th) said in an interview with NJ Spotlight News.
No federal deadline
Trump says his intent is to prevent non-citizens from casting ballots, even though such voting is extremely rare. Critics, though, say the president is motivated to keep Democrats from the polls. His efforts’ outcome is crucial: The November midterms will determine the makeup of the Congress to be sworn in January 2027. An unpopular president — Trump’s approval rating for months has hovered in the high 30s — provides a boost to Democrats, who have a chance to wrest the House and Senate from Republican control.
Much of Trump’s voting agenda has landed in the courts, which recently have handed him stinging defeats, particularly on efforts to alter vote by mail.
The Republican National Committee and the Mississippi Republican Party, for instance, sued the state of Mississippi over its five-day grace period for ballots postmarked by Election Day. The U.S. Supreme Court, with Justice Amy Coney Barrett writing the decision for a 5-4 ruling, said the laws “do not set a deadline for ballot receipt.” New Jersey, which allows six days, is among the 30 states with grace periods of some sort.
In those states, “that issue is now closed and those votes can be counted, and that can’t be changed unless Congress does something, which is extraordinarily unlikely,” said Ezra Rosenberg, director of appellate advocacy for the ALCU-NJ.
Two federal judges in recent weeks dealt blows to a March 31 Trump executive order to block ballot delivery in states that, like New Jersey, have refused to provide voter registration data to the administration.
On July 1, U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan declared that U.S. Postal Service rulemaking to support that order violated a 2021 legal settlement with the NAACP that required priority delivery of election mail. And on June 25, U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani ruled that Trump had no constitutional authority to use the Postal Service in such a manner.
“The U.S. Constitution empowers the States to determine voter eligibility in federal elections,” Talwani wrote. “The Constitution does not grant the President any specific powers over elections.”
The administration is appealing — and should it win, the change would create “chaos” in New Jersey, according to Mercer County Clerk Paula Sollami Covello.
“These proposed regulations would create unnecessary delays in an already time-sensitive process,” Covello wrote in comments submitted as part of the Postal Service rulemaking process. “Any additional federal review requirement inserted before mailing could jeopardize our ability to meet New Jersey’s statutory deadlines and ensure that voters receive their ballots on time. … Eligible voters should not lose valuable time to cast their ballots because of an unnecessary federal administrative requirement.”
About 45,000 Mercer County residents have signed up for election mail-in ballots, Covello said.
“Regardless of where someone stands politically, every voter should be concerned about any proposal that could delay or complicate access to the ballot,” she said.
In the New Jersey primary in June, more than four in five mail-in ballots were cast by Democrats.
‘Any good reason’
Menendez and Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-12th) said efforts to curtail mail-in voting are part of a multistep voter intimidation strategy, especially in the South, to redraw maps to eliminate Democratic-leaning seats, and possibly to deploy Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers at polling sites in November.
“There’s no way on God’s Earth they could win an election if it were fairly administered,” Watson Coleman (D-12th) said in an interview with NJ Spotlight News. “They’re going to try to do everything that they can to try to create chaos and I don’t think that they’re going to succeed.”
Rep. Jeff Van Drew (R-2nd) told NJ Spotlight News that voting by mail should be limited
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“Here’s where you should vote by mail: If you are sick, if you are on a business trip, if you have any good reason,” said Van Drew. As a member of the state Senate and then a Democrat, Van Drew in 2009 voted to change New Jersey’s absentee ballot system to a broad vote-by-mail platform.
At least 20% of New Jersey voters in post-COVID general elections used mail-in ballots. More than a third of voters did so in primaries.
In the June primary, about 686,000 registered voters, including about 18,000 military members and families, were mailed ballots. Almost half were returned.
County election officials received about 17,000 ballots after the June 2 primary, representing about 5% of the total. About nine in 10 were counted, according to an NJ Spotlight News analysis. Many of the rejected ballots were not postmarked by deadline or lacked valid certificates.
