Washington and Oregon Secure Legal Win to Protect Mail-In Voting Deadlines
By Griffin Beach on Tuesday, January 13th, 2026 in Columbia Basin News More Top Stories
SEATTLE – A federal judge ruled Friday that several provisions of President Donald Trump’s “Preserving and Protecting the Integrity of American Elections” executive order violate the separation of powers doctrine.
The executive order, issued in March 2025, sought to require the Election Assistance Commission (EAC) to update national voter registration forms to include physical proof of U.S. citizenship. It also mandated that ballots be received by state officials by Election Day to be counted. Washington and Oregon, both universal mail-in voting states, allow ballots to be counted if they are postmarked by Election Day, even if they arrive after that date.
U.S. District Judge John H. Chun ruled that the president lacks the authority to mandate that the EAC require documentary proof of citizenship on federal registration forms. Chun further stated that federal statutes “require only that all votes are cast by Election Day, not that they are received by that date”.
“The Trump administration attacked American elections with an illegal executive order. Today, we put a stop to that nonsense. This is a win for the Constitution and the American people. Presidents don’t get to rig elections. Period,” Oregon Secretary of State Tobias Read said in a statement Friday.
Also on Friday, Read issued two new directives for local elections officials to restart routine cleanup of inactive voter registration records.
“These directives are about cleaning up old data that’s no longer in use so Oregonians can be confident that our voter records are up to date,” Read said. “From day one, our goal was clear: run elections that are secure, fair, and accurate. This move will strengthen our voter rolls and reinforce public trust in our elections.”
An active voter is anyone with an up-to-date voter registration, even if they have not cast a ballot recently. Inactive status means officials identified a registration as potentially out-of-date. Approximately 800,000 inactive voter records are still being maintained by officials.
Voter registration status can be checked at oregonvotes.gov/myvote.
