New Mexico Secretary of State Maggie Toulouse Oliver issued a sharply worded statement this week attacking President Donald Trump’s new executive order aimed at tightening election security, joining a growing list of Democrat officials nationwide threatening lawsuits over the move.
The executive order, signed this week, seeks to create a nationwide system to verify voter eligibility and tighten rules surrounding mail-in voting — an issue Congress has debated for years but failed to fully address at the federal level.
Within minutes of the order being signed, Democrat officials across the country began threatening legal action. According to Fox News, California Gov. Gavin Newsom immediately responded, “We’re challenging it… See you in court,” while election officials in Arizona, Oregon, Maine and Nevada also signaled they would sue to block the order.
Trump acknowledged the legal fight was coming but signed the order anyway, saying election integrity concerns needed to be addressed. “The cheating on mail-in voting is legendary,” Trump said after signing the order. “I think this will help a lot with elections,” Fox News reported.
The order directs federal agencies to work together to compile lists of eligible voters and includes measures such as ballot tracking barcodes and restrictions on sending absentee ballots to individuals not on verified voter rolls.
But Toulouse Oliver responded with a lengthy statement via X accusing the president of attempting to undermine elections and disenfranchise voters.
“The executive order signed by the President yesterday is yet another unconstitutional attempt to make it harder for eligible voters to cast a ballot and dangerously undermines the confidence in our elections,” Toulouse Oliver said in the statement.
She also claimed the order “threatens to disenfranchise tens of thousands of eligible New Mexicans” and said her office would work with the New Mexico Department of Justice to review the order and “certainly will challenge it.”
Her statement also argued that election administration is a state responsibility and criticized the idea of a federal voter verification system.
However, the U.S. Constitution does not explicitly prohibit the federal government from setting national election standards, and Congress has historically passed numerous federal election laws, including the Help America Vote Act and the National Voter Registration Act.
The executive order comes as Republicans in Congress have pushed for the SAVE Act, a federal law that would require proof of citizenship to vote in federal elections, but the legislation has stalled in the Senate.
Trump’s order appears to be an attempt to move forward on election integrity measures while Congress remains deadlocked.
The issue is likely to be decided in court, as multiple Democrat-led states have already pledged legal action. Fox News reported that election lawyers aligned with Democrats called the order “a massive and unconstitutional voter suppression effort,” while Trump has argued the order is necessary to ensure elections are “clean and fair.”
Toulouse Oliver, a Democrat, is currently running in the party’s primary for lieutenant governor in New Mexico, adding a political dimension to her response as election policy once again becomes a major national issue heading into the 2026 midterm elections.
With lawsuits expected and the federal government moving forward, the fight over who controls election rules in America — states, Congress, or the executive branch — now appears headed for another major court battle.