Oregon joins lawsuit challenging Trump’s order on mail-in ballots

Oregon, the first state to adopt universal mail voting more than 25 years ago, is joining other Democratic-led states suing over President Donald Trump’s executive order limiting mail ballots. 

The 49-page lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Massachusetts, argues that the U.S. Constitution gives states, not the president, the authority to conduct elections. During a call with reporters Friday morning, Oregon Attorney General Dan Rayfield said the coalition expects to seek a preliminary injunction or summary judgment blocking Trump’s executive order.

“When politicians start to see that they’re losing power or their grip on control, they start to implement ideas and thoughts on elections to maintain that control and power,” Rayfield said. “And you’ve seen that during this last year. These crises are existential to our democracy here in America.”

Trump’s executive order would create a national list of voting-age American citizens and direct the U.S. Postal Service to require tracking barcodes on all ballot envelopes mailed by states. It also would require states to provide the Postal Service with a list of all voters planning to vote by mail 60 days prior to an election. Oregon’s voter registration deadline is 21 days prior to an election.

The lawsuit is the 61st Oregon has filed or joined against the Trump administration. Across the country, Democratic attorneys general have filed more than 100 since Trump took office last January. A coalition of Democratic groups filed a separate lawsuit over the order late Wednesday, and several civil rights and voter advocacy groups also sued. 

California is leading the states’ lawsuit, which also includes the attorneys general of Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, Nevada, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, Wisconsin and Washington, D.C., as well as Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro.

Oregon began experimenting with vote by mail in the 1980s and was the first state in the nation to hold an entirely mail election in 1996. Every election in the state has been conducted entirely by mail since 2000.

Since then, seven more states, mostly in the West, have joined Oregon in running all elections entirely by mail, while 28 others allow for no-excuse absentee mail voting. The latter group includes Florida, where Trump voted by mail in a special election last month. 

Oregon and Washington filed their own lawsuit against Trump’s first election executive order almost exactly a year ago, separating from other states led by Democrats because of the Northwestern states’ unique history with elections. Election experts have praised Oregon and Washington as a laboratory for modern elections with pioneering laws including being the first two states to adopt mail voting and allowing ballots mailed on Election Day to be counted. 

“With certain cases, we do believe that it’s incredibly important to file cases in every single district across the country to make a statement and draw the line in the sand,” Rayfield said. “This was one where you had some unique issues that were impacting the broader country in a little bit different ways. … We felt the best strategy was to be in unison, all of us together, pushing back.”  

Oregon and Washington won that lawsuit, when a federal judge in January permanently blocked Trump’s 2025 order that would have required voters prove citizenship and that all ballots be received by Election Day. Rayfield also prevailed in a case preventing the Trump administration from obtaining personally identifiable data of more than 3 million Oregon voters.

Trump acknowledged when signing the latest order that it would likely face litigation, but called it “foolproof.” Rayfield argued that the Constitution — which says “the times, places and manner of holding elections for senators and representatives shall be prescribed in each state by the Legislature thereof” — makes the answer clear. 

“It’s very clear who has the power to regulate elections, so this is just kind of a unique case where, hopefully the case law won’t even matter. It’ll just be a constitutional analysis,” Rayfield said.