Connecticut’s attorney general joins suit filed against Trump’s voting restrictions

HARTFORD, CT (WFSB) - Connecticut’s attorney general announced on Friday that he joined a coalition of 19 attorneys general to file a lawsuit over the Trump administration’s voting restrictions executive order.

Attorney General William Tong said the suit was against President Donald Trump, U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi, the federal Election Assistance Commission, and other officials.

It involved executive order 14248, which the coalition called an unconstitutional, antidemocratic, and un-American attempt to impose sweeping voting restrictions across the country.

It claimed that, among other things, the executive order attempts to conscript state election officials in Trump’s campaign to impose documentary proof of citizenship requirements when Americans seek to register to vote.

“The Constitution plainly forbids the president from commandeering state election officials to manipulate and micromanage how we vote,” Tong said. “We are suing to stop the order and to protect our democracy and our right to cast our ballots in free and fair elections."

The coalition said the order also sought to upend common-sense, well-established state procedures for counting ballots.

Tong said the president has no constitutional power to rewrite state election laws by decree, nor does he have the authority to modify the rules Congress created for elections.

“We need election policies that protect the rights of all citizens and preserve the integrity of our democracy, not additional unfunded mandates that leave states like Connecticut to bear the astronomical costs of compliance,” said Connecticut Secretary of the State Stephanie Thomas. “This executive order only would make voting harder and less accessible, harm election integrity, and increase costs for taxpayers.”

The coalition’s lawsuit claimed that the power to regulate elections is reserved to the states and Congress, and that therefore, the executive order is ultra vires, beyond the scope of presidential power, and violative of the separation of powers.

The attorneys general asked the court to block the challenged provisions of it and declare the order unconstitutional and void.

In filing the suit, Tong joined the attorneys general of Arizona, California, Colorado, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Massachusetts, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Wisconsin.