On March 25, the Trump Administration issued an executive order, “Preserving and Protecting the Integrity of American Elections.” Despite the title, this order does nothing to actually protect our elections—a nonpartisan priority for all voters, regardless of party. Here are some specifics about the executive order related to security and election technology.
Is It lawful?
An executive order is not the same as a law passed by Congress, and is not automatically enforceable when it conflicts with laws already in place. As written, this order would upend the constitutional framework that ensures states administer elections, creating unnecessary uncertainty for election officials, not to mention confusion for voters. For this and other reasons, it has already been challenged in court.
Several organizations have filed lawsuits, including The Campaign Legal Center and the State Democracy Defenders Fund, noting that the president does not have the authority to dictate election rules. In addition, a coalition of civil rights groups also sent this letter to the Election Assistance Commission (EAC), highlighting a number of legal and regulatory issues with implementing the order—more on that below.
Don’t paper records already exist?
The order directs the EAC to require that voting equipment produce a voter-verifiable paper record. Verified Voting has championed paper ballots for more than 20 years, so we have been tracking this: in 2025, such paper ballots and paper records are already in use everywhere except Louisiana. While it’s true that there is a patchwork of different voting systems throughout the country, movement toward ensuring voters can verify their choices on a physical ballot has been consistent, widespread and ultimately successful.
Barcodes and QR codes
The order would prohibit voting systems that use barcodes or QR codes to encode voter choices. Unlike hand-marked paper ballots, some ballot marking devices (BMDs) use such encoding of voter selections on the printed record (along with a listing of the voter’s choices in plain text). But not all—in some cases, the output looks similar to a hand-marked paper ballot where a voter fills in a bubble next to the candidate of their choice, and in others the output contains the selections in plain text only. To find out if your jurisdiction uses machines that print barcodes or QR codes to encode votes, visit the Verifier, click on your state and county, and scroll down to the voting equipment table—we’ve added a column showing if a certain system encodes votes. 
It’s important to understand these paper ballot and encoding “requirements” in context. The order says the EAC must bring about these new requirements by changing the guidelines—known as the Voluntary Voting System Guidelines (VVSG)—to which federal testing and certification is carried out. Updating these standards involves layers of critical stakeholder input and public comment periods so that you and others can weigh in. That takes significantly more time than the order contemplates, even if the Administration had the authority to direct the EAC in this way (it does not).
A key word here is “voluntary”. Adherence to the Voluntary Voting System Guidelines (VVSG) is voluntary—meaning it is left up to the states to decide if they require their voting systems to be certified federally at all, and if so, to the most current version of the VVSG. Right now, no voting systems are even certified to the most recent standards.
Impact and costs
Missing in this order is any mention of how the requirements should be paid for. Not only is equipment replacement costly, but many states statutorily require a specified lead time for counties to replace voting systems—factors the order ignores. Currently, 1,954 counties spread across 40 states use voting machines that encode votes in QR or barcodes. In some places, these machines are used to provide accessible voting for voters with disabilities, while most voters manually mark a paper ballot. In other jurisdictions those machines are in use for all voters. If any systems not certified to the most current standards were decertified, and jurisdictions forced to obtain new voting systems (even if available), jurisdictions would face immense costs and logistical challenges with an entirely inadequate lead time.
Facts matter
In a time of constant disinformation and an onslaught of actions that sow confusion, it’s important to put this executive order into context. U.S. elections are decentralized on purpose. We’ll keep advocating for real improvements—including crucially important audits of voter-verified paper ballots, mentioned nowhere in this order—and continue providing updates on election security and policies that impact voters and election administrators.