Attorney General Alan Wilson asks Supreme Court to allow President Trump’s Executive Order protecting upcoming elections to take effect

(COLUMBIA, S.C.) – South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson today joined 11 other attorneys general to protect the integrity of the upcoming midterm elections. They asked the U.S. Supreme Court to stay a District Court injunction blocking President Trump’s Executive Order aimed at ensuring that only U.S. citizens vote in federal elections.

“It’s already against the law for non-citizens to vote in federal elections, so it’s hard to understand why there’s opposition to President Trump’s executive order to help states make sure the law is followed,” Attorney General Wilson said.

President Trump’s Executive Order directs federal agencies to consider whether and how to create lists of each state’s potentially lawful voters (“State Citizenship Lists”) and to transmit the lists to state election officials, who would retain the option of whether to use them. The Executive Order also directs the U.S. Attorney General to prioritize the enforcement of longstanding federal election laws that prohibit issuing ballots to individuals not eligible to vote in a federal election. And it instructs the U.S. Postal Service to create rules on potential reforms to strengthen the security of mail-in ballots. USPS has since issued a proposed rule that would give the states, not USPS or any part of the federal government, full control over who would or would not be able to vote by mail in federal elections in each state.

Attorney General Wilson argues that a separate group of states that sued doesn’t have standing to challenge the president’s Executive Order because it would impose zero direct obligation on any state. And many of the federal policies in the Executive Order haven’t even been finalized and put into effect, so an injunction is premature.

Joining South Carolina in the application for a stay are the attorneys general of Alabama, Florida, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Oklahoma, South Dakota, and Texas.

You can read their Application for Stay here.