Every red state in America has two kinds of Republicans – elected officials who cede their state's authority to President Donald Trump in silence, and election administration officials anxious about his intentions for the next election.

Trump's March 31 executive order, a power grab on mail ballots that clearly violates the U.S. Constitution, has upped the pressure on both groups.

That order directs the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to create a national list of eligible voters and orders the U.S. Postal Service to send mail ballots only to people on that new federal list. And it orders the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate and prosecute state elections officials who do not comply with the order's terms.

Article I, Section 4 of the U.S. Constitution gives sole power over running elections to the states. Lawsuits seeking to stop Trump's power grab were swiftly filed in Massachusetts and in Washington, DC, by Democratic Party organizations, blue state officials and voter rights advocates.

Trump, who voted by mail in a special election in Florida in March despite being there during early voting, has long spouted lies and unsubstantiated conspiracy theories about voter fraud via mail ballots to stir division and distrust in how elections are conducted.

The real reason for that: Trump wants to invert the system so that he picks the voters instead of the voters picking their politicians. And he blends that motivation with MAGA base pressure to silence red state politicians who know how unconstitutional that all is.

Imagine if a Democrat pulled this

David Becker, a former Department of Justice lawyer who founded The Center for Election Innovation and Research, has suggested a scenario to show how off-kilter that is. Imagine if a Democratic president ordered DHS to create a national voter registry and demanded that everyone on that list gets to vote, regardless of whether they're eligible.

(I know, I know, Trump and his MAGA allies insist that happens now. Because they lie about this.)

Becker, who was speaking in a briefing for journalists, suggested that red state Republicans would be outraged and sue the president.

"And yet, we continue to see this dynamic where Republicans cede their own state sovereignty to this particular president when they would never cede that sovereignty to a president of the other party," Becker said.

The other side of that coin: Election administration officials in red states are just as concerned about Trump's executive order as Democrats in blue states, Becker told me. He recently hosted a webinar for 548 election officials from 42 states and Washington to discuss Trump's executive order.

Becker told me "I heard a lot of concern" about it, in part because of the uncertainty created in 2025 by another Trump executive order power grab on elections, before it was struck down by federal courts.

"This is not a partisan issue," he said. "There are at least as many Republicans expressing concern about these executive orders as Democrats."

Trump's insidious executive order isn't about how you vote

The Brennan Center for Justice, which joined the lawsuits to oppose the executive order, noted in an April 8 briefing that Trump's demand to prosecute anyone who does not obey his constitutional order "appears to sweep in election administration vendors, postal workers, and civic volunteers who help individuals submit their ballots."

Al Schmidt, a Republican appointed as purple-state Pennsylvania's secretary of State in 2023 by Josh Shapiro, a Democrat who had just become governor, told ABC News on April 5 that Trump's executive order is causing "some degree of confusion" while expressing confidence that it will be struck down by the courts.

"We want voters to know that the election is going to be free, fair, safe and secure, and that everyone knows what the rules are prior to going into this," Schmidt said. "So confusion is never a positive thing unless you are seeking to sow distrust in the outcome of an election."

This is not a new scenario for Schmidt or Shapiro. Schmidt was on the receiving end of death threats after he helped administer the 2020 presidential election in Philadelphia and faced Trump's wrath for getting it right.

Shapiro, who as Pennsylvania's attorney general in 2020 fought off Trump's attempts to overturn his presidential loss to Joe Biden in the state, has joined a coalition of more than 20 other states and Washington to challenge the executive order in federal court. And Shapiro, up for reelection this year and considered a likely 2028 presidential contender, boasted in an April 3 social media post that he "went 43-0 against Trump and his allies back in 2020."

Mail ballot use surged in 2020 because of the COVID-19 pandemic, but it has been decreasing in use since then, according to a December 2024 survey by the Pew Research Center. But 35% of American voters used a mail ballot in that presidential election, Pew found, and they included 26% who backed Republican candidates.

Trump's executive order isn't about voting, or how you cast your ballot. It's about him deciding if he wants you to vote at all. More Republicans need to speak up about how that violates the Constitution.

Follow USA TODAY columnist Chris Brennan on X, formerly known as Twitter: @ByChrisBrennan

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