HARTFORD, CT – Connecticut’s top election and law enforcement officials see President Donald Trump’s recent executive order on elections as an attempt to suppress lawful voters.
“This is a lawless attempt to suppress and manipulate free and fair elections across the United States, from an unhinged aspiring dictator still seeking to rewrite history to erase his defeat more than four years ago,” Attorney General William Tong said in a statement Wednesday. “Since 1788 – plainly spelled out in Article 1 of the Constitution and repeatedly affirmed by the Supreme Court – elections are run by the states. This is about Donald Trump trying to pick and choose who gets to vote in this country, and that is not what democracy means.”
Tong added that his office was working closely with officials in other states and “evaluating all legal options to protect our constitutional authority to conduct our elections in a manner that respects voters’ rights and our need for safe and secure elections.”
The order reads, in part, “the United States now fails to enforce basic and necessary election protections employed by modern, developed nations, as well as those still developing.” It also states that “the right of American citizens to have their votes properly counted and tabulated, without illegal dilution, is vital to determining the rightful winner of an election.”
In a Wednesday press conference, Secretary of the State of Connecticut Stephanie Thomas also criticized the order.
“This executive order is an unlawful overreach that will harm eligible voters and disrupt our state’s election process,” Thomas said. “It seeks to impose federal mandates on voter registration without providing the funding or resources needed to carry them out, leaving states like Connecticut to bear the astronomical costs of compliance.”
Thomas also raised concerns about the use of federal databases, such as the Social Security death master file, which could jeopardize privacy by exposing sensitive personal information. Additionally, the order would create unnecessary barriers for military personnel stationed overseas, who would be required to produce documents like birth certificates instead of using their military IDs to register to vote.
“Within the next 30 days a DOGE administrator will review each state’s voter registration list, and every local election clerk around the country is to be given access to the Social Security death master file and any other federal database containing relevant information,” Thomas said. “Every single election worker around the country, imagine that. The data privacy implications are frightening.”
Republican leadership praised the order. State Rep. Gale Mastrofrancesco, R-Wolcott, the Ranking House Republican on the General Assembly’s Government Administration and Elections Committee, praised the order.
“This is absolutely an issue that voters want to see addressed and I appreciate the President for taking action to restore faith in our elections,” Mastrofrancesco wrote in a statement.
She continued: “For years now, House Republicans have continually called for election protections, including presenting identification when voting, ending the use of absentee ballot drop boxes and signature verification for all absentee ballots. Just recently, Connecticut Republicans had asked for federal intervention following the voting scandal in Bridgeport, which is unlikely to be isolated to one city.”
Thomas said, in theory, the demands sound easy.
“But it doesn’t take much imagination to see how this can easily make it harder for eligible voters to vote,” she said. “Your mother moves to an assisted living facility in another town, triggering the need to make a change in her voter registration. She has no passport and long ago lost her 1936 birth certificate.”
She said Connecticut already runs secure elections.
“We have nothing to gain through this order because Connecticut already uses paper ballots, bans foreign spending in elections, counts votes by close of polls on election day, and is in compliance with the Help America Vote Act and Voting Rights Act,” she said. “This executive order would undermine those systems, making voting harder, more expensive, and less accessible. It would create unnecessary hurdles for voters, harm election integrity, and increase costs for