On past election days, dark blue and black ink pens glide across ballots. Voters pass warm cups of coffee down a single-file line forming around the block. For the following months, blue and red “I Voted” stickers in various languages adorn benches, lapels and laptop cases.
Election day is ingrained into the democratic system of the United States of America. It is a day where millions of Americans are invited to leave their homes and use their voice so that their values can be reflected in the country’s politicians.
Still, one-in-three Americans choose to enjoy their cups of coffee at home when filling out their mail-in ballot.
As the Trump administration seeks to implement additional hurdles to mail-in voting, this year’s election could look very different. This plot to curb “election fraud” could include virtual ID checks and fewer ballots in county mailboxes.
Voting by mail has existed in some form since soldiers in the Civil War needed to cast their votes in a place different from their registered home address. Now, due to efforts by the Trump administration, millions of Americans across the country could face increased limitations to mail-in voting.
Two pieces of legislation are currently in progress related to restricting voting by mail:
- The Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act, which mandates proof of citizenship when registering to vote. It passed the House of Representatives and was introduced to the Senate on April 10.
- The Make Elections Great Again (MEGA) Act, which compels individual states to conduct “regular voter purges” in order to ensure voters are in fact eligible to vote.
The MEGA Act was introduced to the house in January 2026.
Despite the gusto with which the Trump administration is championing new voting legislation, many question the legality of their actions.
“There’s nothing in the Constitution that authorizes the president to run elections, or try to control how states or federal governments run elections,” said associate professor of politics and legal studies at UC Santa Cruz, Elizabeth Beaumont. “The Constitution very explicitly gives that power to Congress and to states. The Elections Clause is literally that election rules are going to be prescribed by state legislatures, and that Congress also has the ability to alter the regulations.”
In other words, Beaumont asserts that the Trump administration has no legal basis for legislating away the one-in-ten eligible voters that are naturalized citizens. This sentiment was echoed by Santa Cruz Mayor Fred Keeley.
“This president has very little interest in a functioning democracy,” Keeley said. “This president seems to be interested in winning at all costs, no matter what the cost, whether that is disenfranchising people who are otherwise eligible to vote, intimidating people from voting who may otherwise have challenges to voting, or erecting barriers for people who may not vote for the president.”
This legislation would especially impact Santa Cruz County, where about nine out of ten voters in the 2024 presidential election cast their votes by mail. The typical expectation of voting on a Tuesday leaves many voters unable to vote in person in the middle of a busy workday. According to Beaumont, mail-in voting not only makes voting more accessible, it is also “a good way to help address some of the historical unevenness in our voter participation.”
Although the legislation has not yet been passed, students and community members already express concerns for potential impact the SAVE and MEGA Acts will cause for many communities, including Black Indigenous People of Color, immigrants, transgender and non-binary individuals who have changed their name, young voters and the working class, all under the guise of protecting voting rights.
“There’s only been a couple hundred cases of someone fraudulently voting in the past couple of years,” said fourth-year undergraduate student Kameron Tessier, the statewide president of the California College Democrats. “The [reason] of ‘stopping voter fraud’ is just a guise for attacking the immigrant community.”
Keeley asserted that the Trump administration is directly targeting marginalized communities.
“I’ll just take the cover off it and call it what it is. This is clearly a racist attempt to suppress voting.”
Jasper Webb, a second-year politics major at UCSC, votes by mail from Santa Cruz to his home county of El Dorado, California. He expressed his preference to vote in his majority-red hometown.
“I’m a mail-in voter, through and through. El Dorado County [is] up in the mountains, and I [voted there] rather than in Santa Cruz because I felt like my vote mattered a little bit more there.”
According to Keeley, the traditionally high voter turnout of Santa Cruz could be affected if voting becomes more restricted, increasing apathy in students and community members alike.
“Attempts by the president don’t just stop at the federal level,” he said. “They would also have a chilling effect on people voting at the local level — the level where most people feel [like], ‘gee, I’ve at least got some chance of impacting my city government, my county government, my school board.’”
Students at UCSC pride themselves on their high voter turnout, earning a spot on ALL IN’s list of “Most Engaged Campuses for College Student Voting.” Many of these students vote by mail, either registering in Santa Cruz county once they move to campus or receiving their ballot from their families at home.
Additionally, according to Kameron Tessier, college students rarely keep important documents required to vote in their dorms, opting instead to leave them in their hometowns.
“A lot of college students in their dorm don’t have a copy of their birth certificate,” he said. “We’re not going to see them vote, because they just don’t have access. They’re not going to be able to get all of those documents in time.”
Jasper Webb responded to the larger country’s voting rights restrictions with a push to embrace local community, especially in Santa Cruz county. He stressed that despite current suppression, it is vital now more than ever to use the constitutionally guaranteed right to vote.
“Reach out if you’re passionate about voting, or you’re passionate about people’s well-being. Get out into the town and understand what’s going on down there,” he said. “Don’t let divide and conquer win.”
