(The Lion) — President Donald Trump issued an executive order on Tuesday to tighten election security, targeting years of weakened enforcement under the Biden administration.

It also moves election safeguards to the forefront without waiting on Republicans in Congress to put forward proposals.

In the executive order addressing the “integrity” of American elections, Trump called current election practices “absurd.”

Among the major changes instituted under the order are a crackdown on the abuse of mail-in ballots by the states, a requirement to prove citizenship and the elimination of ballots being accepted after Election Day.

Trump threatened states that don’t cooperate with federal efforts under the current laws to secure elections will have federal funds withheld. Trump cited seven current federal statutes states need to enforce, or risk loss of funds.

Notably, states must use the national voter registration form allowed under U.S. code, “including any requirement for documentary proof of United States citizenship,” according to the order.

Critics have recently contended, with some evidence, that noncitizens are being registered under the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) provisions, that allow people to register to vote when applying for a driver’s license.

Despite claims that voter fraud is “miniscule,” evidence is adding up that the small numbers of cases are the tip of the iceberg.

In Pennsylvania, 100,000 noncitizen voters were recently purged from voter rolls which used motor voter registration, as was previously reported by The Lion.

The NVRA makes it easier for noncitizens to register to vote, a concern that was voiced by conservatives at the time of passage. Provisions were inserted in the NVRA specifically to address critics’ concerns over voter fraud.

One of those provisions was the use of a standard voter registration form, which is increasingly modified by the states.

The Brennan Center for Justice, a leftwing think tank allied with Democrats, called voter fraud a “myth” and “vanishingly rare” after citing a study that found 491 cases of voter fraud out of literally billions of votes cast.

But Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF) said the very improbability of such a small number of fraud cases being generated after billions of votes just proves that prosecution is rare, not fraud.

“Part of the problem is that too many prosecutors don’t want to prosecute election fraud” in part because they’d have to go after friends and allies who helped them get elected, said PILF.

Making the claims that voter fraud is a myth even more unbelievable is the fact that 4 million voters nationwide have been purged after registering under the NVRA. Only 491 cases of fraud with 4 million faulty registrations is hard to believe.

“In November 2022, there were 110 million total ballots cast in the whole country, so 4 million is a lot” of potential fraud, Judicial Watch Senior Attorney Robert Popper said.

In his order, Trump said that the U.S. “fails to enforce basic and necessary election protections employed by modern, developed nations, as well as those still developing.”

He cited India, Brazil, Germany, Canada, Denmark and Sweden as examples of countries with superior election protections compared to the U.S.

Marc Elias, the Clinton lawyer who led the charge to create the now-debunked “Russian Dossier” that alleged Russia interfered in the 2016 election when Trump beat Hillary Clinton in the race for the presidency, said he’d challenge the Trump order on voting security.

“This will not stand,” he said, according to the Associated Press. “We will sue,” he added.

Trump promised in the executive order that enforcement of election security will be stepped up under his Attorney General Pam Bondi and will require the participation of the states.

These agreements shall aim to provide the Department of Justice with detailed information on all suspected violations of State and Federal election laws discovered by State officials, including information on individuals who: 

(i)    registered or voted despite being ineligible or who registered multiple times; 

(ii)   committed election fraud;

(iii)  provided false information on voter registration or other election forms;

(iv)   intimidated or threatened voters or election officials; or 

(v)    otherwise engaged in unlawful conduct to interfere in the election process.

Any states not willing to cooperate with election law enforcement risk intensive federal attention to elections in their state and possible federal lawsuits, said the order. That’s in addition to the withholding of federal funds “as consistent with applicable law.”

Colorado’s top election official, Secretary of State Jena Griswold, a Democrat, appears willing to risk it.

Griswold, who is under pressure after her department allowed electronic voting systems passwords to leak to the public, called the Trump order on elections “unlawful” and said Trump is “trying to make it harder for voters to fight back at the ballot box,” reports the Associated Press.

But while Democratic critics charge there is no basis for fraud because of tiny statistics on fraud their think tanks produce, PILF said that even one fraudulent vote is too many.

“One vote can decide an election, and does, over and over and over again,” said PILF. “The Public Interest Legal Foundation has collected information on hundreds of elections in which there were tied votes – elections where a single vote would have changed the outcome.”

And Vanity Fair was correct in noting that in the 2016 presidential race the number of voters who gave Trump the victory (79,316) would fit into football stadium.

That’s a small number of fraudulent votes to hide across the estimated 176,933 precincts nationwide.

As PILF added, “Nobody can say election fraud doesn’t matter.”