WASHINGTON — The Shapiro administration is studying President Donald Trump's recent executive order aiming to overhaul U.S. voter registration and elections, an order that sparked a lawsuit Tuesday from top Democrats who accuse Trump of seeking to suppress voters.

A Pennsylvania State Department spokesperson said the president's order, issued last week, is under review.

The order seeks to bolster requirements of documentary proof of citizenship to register to vote. It also compels the Department of Homeland Security and Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency to review each state's voter rolls, and calls on the Elections Assistance Commission to cut off funding to states that don't comply with national mail-in ballot forms and proof of citizenship requirements.

"The Shapiro Administration is committed to ensuring appropriate federal laws regarding election administration are followed," the spokesperson said in a statement shared with the Post-Gazette. "But a president cannot overrule established federal legislation and our bipartisan state election laws via executive order."

While Trump's claims of widespread voter fraud in 2020 have been debunked — even by Trump's own administration officials years ago — the Trump administration says U.S. elections must be modernized and more foolproof.

The order cited India's and Brazil's reliance on biometric databases, Canada's and Germany's use of paper ballots as opposed to "the American patchwork of voting methods," and Denmark's and Sweden's greater restrictions on mail-in voting.

The order calls on the Attorney General to take action against states that include in its final vote tallies in presidential and congressional elections mail-in ballots received after Election Day.

Mail-in ballots have been a hot button issue in Pennsylvania for years. Local and national Republican officials sought to encourage more mail-in voting in the 2024 election to catch up to a Democratic edge on mail voting, despite Trump's consistent unfounded claims that mail voting leads to more fraud.

A federal judge on Monday ruled that election boards in Pennsylvania's 67 counties can't invalidate mail ballots with inaccurate dates on outer envelopes. Pennsylvania's Supreme Court also said it will consider the matter earlier this year, the Associated Press reported.

Secretary of the Commonwealth Al Schmidt said in a news conference Thursday that there's "a lot for us to assess" in Trump's elections order, with Pennsylvania officials digging into potential impacts while noting that an executive order has limited power.

Schmidt also recently told Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem that cuts to the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) — which participated in Gov. Josh Shapiro's election threat task force last year — will make elections less secure and undercut state and local election officials.

The latest lawsuit against the administration from Democrats, filed by the Democratic National Committee, Democratic Governors Association, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, and Democrats' congressional campaign arms, mentioned Republican efforts to challenge post-election ballot receipt deadlines in Pennsylvania and other states.

"Congress has repeatedly demonstrated its understanding that ballot receipt deadlines are a question of state, not federal law," the lawsuit states — citing Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, a Trump appointee, who noted allowing ballots mailed by election day but received by a deadline afterward is a "policy choice" reserved by states.

The Democrats note GOP efforts to restrict states' mail-in ballot deadlines "have overwhelmingly failed, with nearly every court rejecting such challenges for a lack of standing, on the merits, or both."

"This executive order is an unconstitutional power grab from Donald Trump that attacks vote by mail, gives DOGE sensitive personal information and makes it harder for states to run their own free and fair elections," the Democrats said in a statement Tuesday. "It will even make it harder for military members serving overseas and married women who have changed their name to have their votes count. Donald Trump and DOGE are doing this as an attempt to rationalize their repeatedly debunked conspiracy theories and set the groundwork to throw out legal votes and ignore election outcomes they do not like."

It remains to be seen whether Shapiro joins the top Democrats in suing the Trump administration. The governor and state agencies in February did sue to challenge an administration freeze of federal funding when state agencies couldn't access about $2 billion in congressionally approved funds; the funds were released almost two weeks later.

"We are proud of Pennsylvania's hard-working county election officials who work year-round to keep our elections fair and secure and to ensure our voter rolls are accurate and up to date," the state department spokesperson said. "The Shapiro Administration is laser-focused on ensuring all eligible Pennsylvania voters can access the ballot box and have confidence that the neighbors voting with them are also eligible voters."

Non-citizen voting is exceptionally rare. New York University's Brennan Center for Justice found only 30 possible votes by noncitizens out of 23.5 million votes in 2016.

Already, only Pennsylvanians who meet various requirements, including citizenship, can register to vote. Under the state constitution, a voter must "have been a citizen of the United States at least one month," in addition to meeting state and voting district residency requirements.

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