Democrats Sue Trump Administration Over Overseas Voter Registration

The Democratic National Committee filed a lawsuit on Thursday alleging that the administration of President Donald Trump secretly modified voter registration postcards for U.S. citizens living abroad. The suit claims the Department of Defense declared a manufactured emergency to remove a citizenship acknowledgment checkbox, which would make registration more difficult for citizens who have never resided in the United States, including children of U.S. citizens.

This legal challenge follows efforts by Republicans to restrict overseas voting, including a successful court case in North Carolina that barred votes from citizens who never lived in that state. The lawsuit also coincides with Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth urging military members to vote en masse to potentially out-vote Democratic jurisdictions. The Department of Defense has not yet responded to requests for comment.

In a separate legal development, U.S. District Judge David Leibowitz dismissed a federal case against Chelsea Cox, a Jamaican national accused of illegal voting in Florida. Leibowitz ruled that the 1996 federal law criminalizing noncitizen voting is unconstitutional, asserting that only states possess the authority to set voter qualifications. This ruling represents a setback for the United States Department of Justice, which has charged at least 60 people with noncitizen voting since January 2025 as part of a campaign against alleged election fraud.