LONDON (AP) — There has been a mixed reaction in Britain to the government’s announcement that it will lower the voting age from 18 to 16 before the next national election.

The Labour Party administration says it’s part of a package of changes to strengthen British democracy and help restore trust in politics. The opposition says it’s a power-grab by the left.

Experts say it’s complicated, with mixed evidence about how lowering the voting age affects democracy and election outcomes.

The biggest change since the 1960s

Britain’s voting age last fell in 1969, when the U.K. became one of the first major democracies to lower it from 21 to 18. Many other countries, including the United States, followed suit within a few years.

Now the government says it will lower the threshold to 16 by the time the next general election is held, likely in 2029. That will bring the whole country into line with Scotland and Wales, which have semiautonomous governments and already let 16- and 17-year-olds vote in local and regional elections.

A handful of other countries currently have a voting age of 16, including Austria, Brazil and Ecuador. A few European Union countries, including Belgium, Germany and Malta, allow 16-year-olds to vote in elections to the European Parliament.

The case for votes at 16

Supporters argue that 16-year-olds in Britain can work and pay taxes, so should be allowed to vote.

“If you pay in, you should have the opportunity to say what you want your money spent on,” Prime Minister Keir Starmer said.

Pro-democracy organizations welcomed the lower age, and a move toward automatic voter registration, saying it would help increase voting rates. Turnout in the 2024 election was 59.7%, the lowest level in more than two decades.

The age change is part of a package of electoral reforms that includes tightening campaign financing rules and broadening the range of documents that can be used as identification at polling stations.

Supporters argue it will increase democratic participation by getting teenagers into the habit of voting at a time when most are still in school.

“Younger people who are in full-time education and often still live at home can make for better, more engaged first-time voters compared with 18- to 20-year-olds, who often experience their first election in a highly transitory phase of their lives,” Christine Huebner, a social scientist at the University of Sheffield who has studied youth voting, wrote in The Guardian.

Critics call it a cynical move

Opponents argue that 16- and 17-year-olds should not be given the vote because in most ways they are not considered adults.

“Why does this government think a 16-year-old can vote but not be allowed to buy a lottery ticket, an alcoholic drink, marry, or go to war, or even stand in the elections they’re voting in?” Conservative lawmaker Paul Holmes asked Thursday in the House of Commons.

Mark Goodwin, a senior lecturer in politics at Coventry University, agreed the move could seem paradoxical, because “socially, if anything, we’re moving in the opposite direction.”

“Increasingly the age of majority, the age at which you become a fully capable and responsible adult, is moving more towards 18,” he said.

The government’s political opponents on the right argue that Labour hopes to benefit from 1.5 million new potential young voters who generally lean to the left.

Nigel Farage, leader of the hard-right party Reform UK, said Labour was trying to “rig the system.” Conservative former foreign secretary James Cleverly said the government had cynically announced the change because it is “tanking in the polls.”

Labour can’t take youth votes for granted

Experts say enfranchising 16- and 17-year-olds is unlikely to dramatically change election results, because they are a relatively small group with diverse views. And it’s far from clear that Labour will reap most of the benefits of a bigger youth vote.

U.K. politics, long dominated by Labour and the Conservatives, is becoming increasingly fragmented. Polling suggests younger voters lean left, but they are split among several parties including Labour, the Greens and the Liberal Democrats. Farage’s embrace of TikTok has built his brand with youth, and Reform has some support among young men.

Goodwin said that in many parts of the world, “young people are abandoning the center-left in droves.

“And in many cases, they’re lending their support to parties of the populist right, or challenger parties, outsider parties, independents, more alternative parties,” he said.

“If it is a cynical ploy to get more Labour votes, there’s certainly an element of risk about where those votes would ultimately be cast.”

WASHINGTON (AP) — Republican elected officials are promoting their recently passed tax and spending bill as a win for working Americans, but a new survey shows that Americans broadly see it as a win for the wealthy.

About two-thirds of U.S. adults expect the new tax law will help the rich, according to the poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. Most — about 6 in 10 — think it will do more to hurt than help low-income people. About half say it will do more harm than good for middle-class people and people like them.

Republicans have already begun airing advertisements framing the legislation as a tax cut for all Americans, highlighting new deductions on tips and overtime income. But Democrats have been making the case that the wealthiest Americans will benefit from the legislation, citing cuts to Medicaid and food assistance programs.

The new poll indicates that Republicans still have persuading to do. The high price tag may also be turning off some Americans. Trump’s approval rating on government spending has fallen since the spring, according to the new survey, and about 6 in 10 U.S. adults across the political spectrum think the government is spending “too much.”

Americans see little benefit for low-income or middle-class people

Most people have heard at least something about the new law, according to the poll, which found that about two-thirds of U.S. adults have heard or read “a lot” or “some” about it.

Those who know something about the legislation are more likely to believe it favors the wealthy, compared with people who have heard “only a little” or “nothing at all.”

Anaiah Barrow, a 25-year-old single mom from North Carolina who doesn’t identify with a political party, said she’s concerned that the new law will hurt caregivers like her. Barrow — who’s juggling a job, taking care of two young children and pursuing a degree — is concerned about losing access to day care and food stamps.

“It has a really big effect,” Barrow said of the recently passed legislation, which she has learned about on TikTok. “It may not be as a big now, but in the long run it’s going to have that effect — it’s going to hit bad.”

Even many Republicans agree that the wealthy are likely to benefit from the tax and spending law. About half say the law will do more to help the wealthy. A similar percentage say this about middle-class people, while about 4 in 10 Republicans think it will do more to help than hurt low-income people.

Lori Nichols, a 51-year-old caregiver for her elderly mother in Illinois, said the legislation has “very little for the older people and people that are on disability.” Although Nichols is a Republican, she said she didn’t vote in the 2024 presidential election and voted for Democrat Joe Biden in 2020.

“As far as the tax part goes, it seems to me like (Trump’s) just making the rich richer,” Nichols said.

Republicans are less likely to think they’ll be harmed

Despite the overall sense that wealthy people will be the primary beneficiaries, Democrats and independents are much likelier than Republicans to think the law could harm them personally.

Nathan Hay, a shift service manager at an international dealership that repairs trucks, said he thinks lower-income people might see a “slight increase” in taxes but still supports the bill. “Personally, it’s not helping me a ton,” Hay said, but he believes it will help small businesses, which have been a staple in his own life and his family’s.

About half of Republicans expect the legislation to do more to help “people like you,” compared with about 2 in 10 independents and just 6% of Democrats.

“I’m not a tax accountant, but it sounds as if it would be more beneficial to (people) in the higher tax level,” said Republican Geraldine Putnam, 87, a Trump voter who lives in the rural south.

“It’s not that I would want to take away the incentive to become more wealthy — that’s the American dream,” Putnam said.

But she also thinks she’ll end up paying more in taxes. “What he’s doing I’m sure he thinks is correct,” she said of Trump. “It’s just the extreme method that he’s using.”

Trump approval on government spending

The law’s hefty price tag may be factoring into some Americans’ assessments of the law. The poll found they are less likely to approve of how Trump is handling government spending since the spring.

Just 38% of Americans approve of how Donald Trump is handling government spending, compared with 46% in an AP-NORC poll conducted in March.

Republicans are less likely to say the government is spending “too much” than they were in March 2023, when Joe Biden was president, but about 6 in 10 still think the government is overspending. A similar share of Democrats say the same thing.

Putnam, now a retiree, took issue with Trump’s cuts in federal workers, even though she says she approves of being able to “trim off people who aren’t really doing their jobs.”

The way she sees it, Trump drew attention to people abusing social services, then “fires the people in the office” that are investigating that very fraud and abuse. “What’s the sense in that?” she asked.

The AP-NORC poll of 1,437 adults was conducted July 10-14, using a sample drawn from NORC’s probability-based AmeriSpeak Panel, which is designed to be representative of the U.S. population. The margin of sampling error for adults overall is plus or minus 3.6 percentage points.

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — Two California Republican state lawmakers launched a campaign Wednesday to place a measure on the 2026 ballot that would require voter identification and proof of citizenship at the polls.

The proposal would require the state to verify proof of citizenship when a person registers to vote, and voters would have to provide identifications at the polls. Those who vote through mail-in ballots would have to give the last four digits of a government-issued ID such as a Social Security number.

“We do not want to make it harder to vote. In fact, our initiative makes it easier to vote because it streamlines the process to verify someone’s identity,” Assemblymember Carl DeMaio, who’s leading the effort, said at a Wednesday news conference.

The Republican lawmakers said the measure would help restore trust in elections where they said people have complained about outdated voter rolls and an inadequate signature review process, with some also casting doubt on election results.

While voting by noncitizens has occurred, research and reviews of state cases have shown it to be rare and typically a mistake rather than an intentional effort to sway an election. Voter fraud is also rare.

California is among 14 states and the District of Columbia that do not require voters to show some form of identification at the polls or to register to voter.

The California campaign came as congressional Republicans were working to advance their own legislation to overhaul the nation’s voting procedures at the urging of President Donald Trump. Across the country, lawmakers in 17 states have introduced legislation this year to require proof of citizenship for voters, according to National Conference of State legislatures.

Opponents argued that the requirements make it more difficult for people to vote, especially the elderly, those with disabilities and those without driver’s licenses. The NAACP and other civil rights groups have argued that it disproportionately harms Black and Latino voters. Democrats in the California Legislature, who hold supermajorities in both chambers, in April rejected a bill by DeMaio aiming to enact similar voting rule changes.

The statewide proposal also came as the state continued to challenge a local measure passed by voters in the city of Huntington Beach to require voter identification at the polls. The state last year sued the city over the new rule, and Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a law to prohibit local governments in California from establishing and enforcing laws that require residents provide identification to vote in elections.

Sen. Tony Strickland, who helped pass the Huntington Beach measure as a city councilmember last year, said he expects a similar fight from state Democrats over the issue.

“The courts would be on our side because we carefully drafted this initiative. It’s constitutional,” he said.

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump on Friday called for the appointment of a special prosecutor to investigate the 2020 election won by Democrat Joe Biden, repeating his baseless claim that the contest was marred by widespread fraud.

“Biden was grossly incompetent, and the 2020 election was a total FRAUD!” Trump said in a social media post in which he also sought to favorably contrast his immigration enforcement approach with that of the former president. “The evidence is MASSIVE and OVERWHELMING. A Special Prosecutor must be appointed. This cannot be allowed to happen again in the United States of America! Let the work begin!”

Trump’s post, made as his Republican White House is consumed by a hugely substantial foreign policy decision on whether to get directly involved in the Israel-Iran war, is part of an amped-up effort by him to undermine the legitimacy of Biden’s presidency. Earlier this month, Trump directed his administration to investigate Biden’s actions as president, alleging aides masked his predecessor’s “cognitive decline.” Biden has dismissed the investigation as “a mere distraction.”

The post also revives a long-running grievance by Trump that the election was stolen even though courts around the country and a Trump attorney general from his first term found no evidence of fraud that could have affected the outcome. The Department of Homeland Security’s cybersecurity arm pronounced the election “the most secure in American history.”

It was unclear what Trump had in mind when he called for a special prosecutor, but in the event Attorney General Pam Bondi heeds his call, she may face pressure to appoint someone who has already been confirmed by the Senate. A Justice Department spokesman declined to comment Friday.

The Justice Department in recent years has appointed a succession of special counsels — sometimes, though not always, plucked from outside the agency — to lead investigations into politically sensitive matters, including into conduct by Biden and by Trump.

Last year, Trump’s personal lawyers launched an aggressive, and successful, challenge to the appointment of Jack Smith, the special counsel assigned to investigate his efforts to undo the 2020 presidential election and his retention of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida. A Trump-appointed judge agreed, ruling that then-Attorney General Merrick Garland had exceeded his bounds by appointing a prosecutor without Senate approval and confirmation, and dismissed the case.

That legal team included Todd Blanche, who is now deputy attorney general, as well as Emil Bove, who is Blanche’s top deputy but was recently nominated to serve as a judge on a federal appeals court.

Follow the AP’s coverage of President Donald Trump at https://apnews.com/hub/donald-trump.

A political consultant who sent artificial intelligence-generated robocalls mimicking former President Joe Biden to New Hampshire Democrats last year was acquitted Friday of voter suppression and impersonating a candidate.

Steven Kramer, 56, of New Orleans, admitted orchestrating a message sent to thousands of voters two days before the state’s Jan. 23, 2024, presidential primary. Recipients heard an AI-generated voice similar to the Democratic president’s that used his catchphrase “What a bunch of malarkey” and, as prosecutors alleged, suggested that voting in the primary would preclude voters from casting ballots in November.

“It’s important that you save your vote for the November election,” voters were told. “Your votes make a difference in November, not this Tuesday.”

Kramer, who would have faced decades in prison if convicted, testified that he wanted to send a wake-up call about the potential dangers of AI when he paid a New Orleans magician $150 to create the recording. He was getting frequent calls from people using AI in campaigns, and, worried about the lack of regulations, made it his New Year’s resolution to take action.

“This is going to be my one good deed this year,” he recalled while testifying in Belknap County Superior Court.

Prosecutors argued the calls amounted to an attack on the integrity of the primary, while Kramer’s defense tried to direct outrage at the Democratic National Committee instead.

At Biden’s request, the DNC dislodged New Hampshire from its traditional early spot in the 2024 nominating calendar, but later dropped its threat not to seat the state’s national convention delegates. Biden did not put his name on the ballot or campaign there, but won as a write-in.

Kramer, who owns a firm specializing in get-out-the-vote projects, argued that the primary was a meaningless straw poll unsanctioned by the DNC, and therefore the state’s voter suppression law didn’t apply. The defense also said he didn’t impersonate a candidate because the message didn’t include Biden’s name, and Biden wasn’t a declared candidate in the primary.

Jurors apparently agreed, acquitting him of 11 felony voter suppression charges, each punishable by up to seven years in prison. The 11 candidate impersonation charges each carried a maximum sentence of a year in jail.

“Our commitment to enforcing election laws remains steadfast,” New Hampshire Attorney General John M. Formella said in a statement. “We will continue to work diligently to address the challenges posed by emerging technologies, including artificial intelligence, to protect the integrity of our elections.”

Kramer also faces a $6 million fine by the Federal Communications Commission, but he told The Associated Press that he won’t pay it. Lingo Telecom, the company that transmitted the calls, agreed to pay $1 million in a settlement in August.

The agency, which did not respond to requests for comment, was developing AI-related rules when Donald Trump won the presidency, but it has since shown signs of a possible shift toward loosening regulations. And though many states have enacted legislation regulating AI deepfakes in political campaigns, House Republicans in Congress recently added a clause to their signature tax bill that would ban states and localities from regulating artificial intelligence for a decade.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court agreed Monday to consider reviving a Republican challenge to an Illinois law that allows mail ballots to be counted if they are received up to two weeks after Election Day.

The justices will hear arguments in the fall over whether Rep. Mike Bost, R-Ill., and two former presidential electors have the legal right, or standing, to sue over the law in federal court. Lower federal courts ruled they lack standing.

But the case could serve to amplify claims made by President Donald Trump that late-arriving ballots and drawn out electoral counts undermine confidence in elections.

Illinois is among 18 states and the District of Columbia that accept mailed ballots received after Election Day as long they are postmarked on or before that date, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

In March, Trump signed a sweeping executive order on elections that aims to require votes to be “cast and received” by Election Day and says federal funding should be conditional on state compliance.

In their appeal to the court, the Illinois Republicans said the justices should make clear that candidates have the right to challenge state regulations of federal elections.

ATLANTA (AP) — President Donald Trump’s executive order seeking to overhaul how U.S. elections are run includes a somewhat obscure reference to the way votes are counted. Voting equipment, it says, should not use ballots that include “a barcode or quick-response code.”

Those few technical words could have a big impact.

Voting machines that give all voters a ballot with one of those codes are used in hundreds of counties across 19 states. Three of them — Georgia, South Carolina and Delaware — use the machines statewide.

Some computer scientists, Democrats and left-leaning election activists have raised concerns about their use, but those pushing conspiracy theories about the 2020 presidential election have been the loudest, claiming without evidence that manipulation has already occurred. Trump, in justifying the move, said in the order that his intention was “to protect election integrity.”

Even some election officials who have vouched for the accuracy of systems that use coded ballots have said it’s time to move on because too many voters don’t trust them.

Colorado’s secretary of state, Democrat Jena Griswold, decided in 2019 to stop using ballots with QR codes, saying at the time that voters “should have the utmost confidence that their vote will count.” Amanda Gonzalez, the elections clerk in Colorado’s Jefferson County, doesn’t support Trump’s order but believes Colorado’s decision was a worthwhile step.

“We can just eliminate confusion,” Gonzalez said. “At the end of the day, that’s what I want — elections that are free, fair, transparent.”

Target for misinformation

Whether voting by mail or in person, millions of voters across the country mark their selections by using a pen to fill in ovals on paper ballots. Those ballots are then fed through a tabulating machine to tally the votes and can be retrieved later if a recount is needed.

In other places, people voting in person use a touch-screen machine to mark their choices and then get a paper record of their votes that includes a barcode or QR code. A tabulator scans the code to tally the vote.

Election officials who use that equipment say it’s secure and that they routinely perform tests to ensure the results match the votes on the paper records, which they retain. The coded ballots have nevertheless become a target of election conspiracy theories.

“I think the problem is super exaggerated,” said Lawrence Norden of the Brennan Center for Justice. “I understand why it can appeal to certain parts of the public who don’t understand the way this works, but I think it’s being used to try to question certain election results in the past.”

Those pushing conspiracy theories related to the 2020 election have latched onto a long-running legal battle over Georgia’s voting system. In that case, a University of Michigan computer scientist testified that an attacker could tamper with the QR codes to change voter selections and install malware on the machines.

The testimony from J. Alex Halderman has been used to amplify Trump’s false claims that the 2020 election was stolen, even though there is no evidence that any of the weaknesses he found were exploited.

Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a Republican, has defended the state’s voting system as secure. In March, the judge who presided over Halderman’s testimony declined to block the use of Georgia’s voting equipment but said the case had “identified substantial concerns about the administration, maintenance and security of Georgia’s electronic in-person voting system.”

Can the executive order ban coded ballots?

Trump’s election executive order is being challenged in multiple lawsuits. One has resulted in a preliminary injunction against a provision that sought to require proof of citizenship when people register to vote.

Some of the lawsuits say Trump doesn’t have the authority to direct the commission because it was established by Congress as an independent agency.

While the courts sort that out, the commission’s guidelines say ballots using barcodes or QR codes should include a printed list of the voters’ selections so they can be checked.

Trump’s order exempts voting equipment used by voters with disabilities, but it promises no federal money to help states and counties shift away from systems using QR or barcodes.

“In the long run, it would be nice if vendors moved away from encoding, but there’s already evidence of them doing that,” said Pamela Smith, president of Verified Voting, a group that focuses on election technology and favors ending the use of QR and barcodes.

Counties in limbo

Kim Dennison, election coordinator of Benton County, Arkansas, estimated that updating the county’s voting system would cost around $400,000 and take up to a year.

Dennison said she has used equipment that relies on coded ballots since she started her job 15 years ago and has never found an inaccurate result during postelection testing.

“I fully and completely trust the equipment is doing exactly what it’s supposed to be doing and not falsifying reports,” she said. “You cannot change a vote once it’s been cast.”

In Pennsylvania’s Luzerne County, voting machines that produce a QR code will be used in this year’s primary. But officials expect a manufacturer’s update later this year to remove the code before the November elections.

County Manager Romilda Crocamo said officials had not received any complaints from voters about QR codes but decided to make the change when Dominion Voting Systems offered the update.

The nation’s most populous county, Los Angeles, uses a system with a QR code that it developed over a decade and deployed in 2020 after passing a state testing and certification program.

The county’s chief election official, Dean Logan, said the system exceeded federal guidelines at the time and meets many of the standards outlined in the most recent ones approved in 2021. He said postelection audits have consistently confirmed its accuracy.

Modifying or replacing it would be costly and take years, he said. The county’s current voting equipment is valued at $140 million.

‘Train Wreck’ in Georgia?

Perhaps nowhere has the issue been more contentious than Georgia, a presidential battleground. It uses the same QR code voting system across the state.

Marilyn Marks, executive director of the Coalition for Good Governance, a lead plaintiff in the litigation over the system, said her group has not taken a position on Trump’s executive order but said the federal Election Assistance Commission should stop certifying machines that use barcodes.

The secretary of state said the voting system follows Georgia law, which requires federal certification at the time the system is bought. Nevertheless, the Republican-controlled legislature has voted to ban the use of QR codes but did not allocate any money to make the change — a cost estimated at $66 million.

Republicans said they want to replace the system when the current contract expires in 2028, but their law is still scheduled to take effect next year. GOP state Rep. Victor Anderson said there is no realistic way to “prevent the train wreck that’s coming.”

Associated Press writer Christina A. Cassidy contributed to this report.

Kramon is a corps member for The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues. Follow Kramon on X: @charlottekramon.

WASHINGTON (AP) — As President Donald Trump seeks to end diversity, equity and inclusion practices on college campuses, a new poll suggests that while the concept of DEI is divisive, some of the initiatives being affected by his administration’s guidance are less controversial.

The poll, conducted earlier this month by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, found about 4 in 10 Americans “strongly” or “somewhat” favor DEI programs in colleges and universities, while about 3 in 10 oppose those initiatives and about 3 in 10 are neutral.

Support is higher for courses on racism and scholarships for students of color, among other services designed to help students from underrepresented groups.

The findings underscore that while “DEI” has become a politically toxic and unpopular term for many Americans, some components of DEI programs have much less opposition.

This is especially true among Republicans. While about 6 in 10 Republicans oppose DEI programs broadly, their opposition softens for many of their most common elements. Just under half of Republicans oppose courses that teach about racism. About one-third oppose scholarships for students from underrepresented groups. And roughly 3 in 10 oppose clubs and mentorship services for those students.

About 7 in 10 Democrats, by contrast, favor DEI programs on college campuses, with similar shares supporting courses that teach about racism and scholarships or extracurricular support services for students from underrepresented groups.

Divides reflect different views of DEI’s meaning

Some of this tension may stem from differing perspectives on what DEI means.

“I’m dead set against DEI,” says poll respondent Robert Ayala, an 81-year-old registered independent who leans Republican. His understanding of DEI is “giving someone a free ride” or hiring people based on their skin color, as opposed to their skill set.

But Ayala says he fully supports scholarships and mentoring to help disadvantaged students. Ayala, who has Mexican ancestry, grew up poor in rural South Dakota, faced prejudice as a child and lacked career direction. “If I was offered a scholarship or training or had somebody to guide me, I might have found my way faster,” says Ayala, who spent 22 years in the Navy, then went into contracting and is now retired near Palm Springs, California.

Trump, a Republican, has signed multiple executive orders to eliminate diversity practices in the federal government, private companies and in education, calling them “illegal” and “immoral.” He has threatened to cut federal funding to campuses that defy him. Some of his orders are being challenged in court.

On campuses, students of color say colleges responding to the new guidance have cut back scholarships, diversity offices and mentors that made them feel welcome on predominantly white campuses.

“Everybody should have the same opportunities as everybody else,” says Stanley Roberts, 61, a registered Republican near Knoxville, Tennessee. He is “somewhat” opposed to the idea of DEI and is “on the fence” about courses that teach about racism because he thinks dwelling on the past creates division. “What happened 200 years ago or 1,000 years ago shouldn’t have happened,” he says, “but if everybody would quit talking about it, it would be a whole lot less of a problem.”

White adults are more likely to oppose DEI programs

The poll shows that white adults are more likely than Black and Hispanic adults to oppose DEI programs.

Black adults are more likely than U.S. adults overall to favor courses that teach about racism.

“I know this sounds cliché to say, but the reason I favor teaching about racism is so history doesn’t repeat itself,” says Nicole Martin, 34, a Black social worker in Idaho Falls, Idaho. “I hear a lot of, ‘Oh, just get over it.’ But I think, ‘OK you don’t want to talk about slavery. But we’re still talking about the Holocaust and that’s OK.’”

The poll found that women are more likely than men to say they support DEI programs on college campuses, as well as support services for students from underrepresented groups.

“Without DEI, I am not sure there are many chances for understanding other people’s experiences,” says Regina Cuddeback, 27, a Democrat in Cortland, New York, who says her support for DEI depends on the context.

Cuddeback does not think race should factor into college admissions but DEI programs on campuses are “completely fine,” and she does not think the federal government should have a say in the courses colleges offer.

“Students have a right to take the classes they want to take,” says Cuddeback, who is white and a registered Democrat. “For a college to remove a class and say you don’t get to learn a certain subject anymore would be pretty abysmal.”

Gecker reported from San Francisco.

The AP-NORC poll of 1,175 adults was conducted May 1-5, using a sample drawn from NORC’s probability-based AmeriSpeak Panel, which is designed to be representative of the U.S. population. The margin of sampling error for adults overall is plus or minus 4 percentage points.

The Associated Press’ education coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. The AP is solely responsible for all content. Find the AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

NEW YORK (AP) — A judge on Thursday blocked the Trump administration from immediately enacting certain changes to how federal elections are run, including adding a proof-of-citizenship requirement to the federal voter registration form.

The decision is a setback for President Donald Trump, who has argued the requirement is needed to restore public confidence in elections. But the judge allowed other parts of Trump’s sweeping executive order on U.S. elections to go forward for now, including a directive to tighten mail ballot deadlines around the country.

Trump’s March executive order overhauling how U.S. elections are run prompted swift lawsuits from the League of United Latin American Citizens, the League of Women Voters Education Fund, the Democratic National Committee and others, who called it unconstitutional.

U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly in Washington sided with voting rights groups and Democrats, saying that the Constitution gives the power to regulate federal elections to states and Congress — not the president. She noted federal lawmakers are currently working on their own legislation to require proof of citizenship to vote.

In a 120-page decision on Thursday, she said the plaintiffs had proven that the proof-of-citizenship requirement would cause their clients irreparable harm and go against the public interest, while the government had offered “almost no defense of the President’s order on the merits.”

Accordingly, she granted a preliminary injunction to stop the citizenship requirement from moving forward while the lawsuit plays out.

The judge also blocked part of the Republican president’s order requiring public assistance enrollees to have their citizenship assessed before getting access to the federal voter registration form.

But she denied other requests from a group of Democratic plaintiffs, including refusing to block Trump’s order to require all mailed ballots to be received by Election Day nationwide. She also did not touch Trump’s order to open certain databases to billionaire Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency to allow it to review state voter lists to search for noncitizens. The judge said those arguments brought by Democrats were either premature or should be brought by states instead.

The plaintiffs had argued Trump’s proof-of-citizenship requirement violated the Constitution’s so-called Elections Clause, which gives states and Congress the authority to determine how elections are run.

They also argued that Trump’s order asserts power that he does not have over an independent agency. That agency, the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, sets voluntary voting system guidelines and maintains the federal voter registration form.

During an April 17 hearing, attorneys for the plaintiffs had said requiring proof of citizenship on the federal voter registration form would complicate their clients’ voter registration drives at grocery stores and other public places.

Aria Branch, counsel for the Democratic National Committee and other Democratic plaintiffs, also argued the executive order’s effort to tighten mail ballot deadlines would irreparably harm her clients by forcing them to reallocate resources to help voters navigate the changes.

“That’s time, money and organizational resources and strategy that can’t be recouped,” she said.

Michael Gates, counsel for the Trump administration, said in the hearing a preliminary injunction wasn’t warranted because the order hadn’t been implemented and a citizenship requirement would not be on the federal voter registration form for many months.

Roman Palomares, president of the League of United Latin American Citizens, a nonpartisan plaintiff, said Thursday the judge’s decision was a “victory for voters.”

“Efforts to silence the voice and votes of the U.S. electorate must not stand because our democracy depends on all voters feeling confident that they can vote freely and that their vote will be counted accurately,” he said in a statement.

Representing the Democratic plaintiffs, Branch said in a Thursday statement that “this fight is far from over” but called the ruling a “victory for democracy and the rule of law over presidential overreach.”

The chairs of the DNC, Democratic Governors Association and Democratic committees in Congress said if the judge hadn’t ruled in their favor on citizenship proof, “Americans across the country — including married women who changed their last name and low-income individuals — could have been unable to register to vote.”

The Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division said it was disappointed by the ruling.

“Few things are more sacred to a free society or more essential to democracy than the protection of its election systems,” said Harmeet Dhillon, assistant attorney general for civil rights.

Donald Palmer, chair of the EAC, a defendant in the case, said his office was still reviewing the ruling and opinion “but we will comply with the Judge’s decision.”

The judge’s decision comes as state and local election officials from across the country are meeting to consider the implications of Trump’s executive order on their work.

The U.S. Election Assistance Commission’s Standards Board, which was holding a public hearing in North Carolina on Thursday, is a bipartisan advisory group of election officials from every state that meets annually.

Meanwhile, other lawsuits against Trump’s order are still pending.

In early April, 19 Democratic attorneys general asked the court to reject Trump’s executive order. Washington and Oregon, which both hold all-mail elections, followed with their own lawsuit against the order.

The U.S. differs from many other countries in that it does not hold national elections run by the federal government. Instead, elections are decentralized — overseen by the states and run by thousands of local jurisdictions.

Associated Press writer Christina A. Cassidy in Atlanta contributed reporting.

ATLANTA (AP) — Florida’s “hanging chads” ballot controversy riveted the nation during the 2000 presidential contest and later prompted Congress to create an independent commission to help states update their voting equipment.

The U.S. Election Assistance Commission has operated in relative anonymity since, but is now central to President Donald Trump’sexecutive order seeking to overhaul elections. One of the commission’s boards will meet Thursday in North Carolina, the first commission-related meeting since the directives were announced.

Among other things, Trump directed the agency to update the national voter registration form to add a proof of citizenship requirement. But whether the president can order an independent agency to act and whether the commission has the authority to do what Trump wants will likely be settled in court.

Why was the commission created?

Congress approved the Help America Vote Act in 2002 to help states replace outdated voting systems and improve the voting experience.

It passed overwhelmingly with bipartisan support and was signed into law by then-President George W. Bush, a Republican who won the 2000 presidential contest over Democrat Al Gore in a disputed election that went to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The culprit was a method of voting at the time in Florida that relied on so-called punch-card ballots, which required voters to mark their choices using a hand-held stylus. But thousands of voters didn’t punch their ballot choices completely, leaving it to local election workers — some using magnifying glasses — to divine their intent. The resulting chaos in the pivotal swing state and intense national attention turned “hanging” and “pregnant” chads into household terms.

The Supreme Court ultimately stopped the counting, leaving Bush with a 537-vote victory margin that gave him the Electoral Votes he needed to claim the presidency.

The 2002 law was designed to modernize the voting process. Under it, the Election Assistance Commission was given a number of mandates: distribute $2.8 billion in federal money for new voting equipment; create voluntary guidelines for voting systems and establish a federal testing and certification program for them; oversee the national voter registration form; and gather data about federal elections.

The four commissioners who lead the agency are nominated by the president based on recommendations from the majority and minority leaders in the U.S. House and Senate, then confirmed by the Senate. No political party can be represented by more than two commissioners.

At various points, the agency has faced budget cuts, staffing shortages and gridlock caused by vacancies in the commissioner positions. But a consistent budget and a quorum among the commissioners since 2019 has led to increased stability, with election officials praising its efforts in recent years.

Trump wants to put his own stamp on elections

Trump has long been skeptical of how elections are run, making false claims that the 2020 election was “rigged” against him. Multiple reviews of that election confirmed his loss to Democrat Joe Biden.

He has continued to criticize voting processes since his win last November, including in his March 25 executive order, which calls for major changes that include a proof-of-citizenship requirement when people register to vote for federal elections.

While Trump directed several federal agencies to act, two of the order’s major provisions were directed at the Election Assistance Commission.

It was instructed to “take appropriate action” within 30 days to require documentary proof of citizenship on the national voter registration form. The order outlines acceptable documents as a U.S. passport, a REAL-ID compliant driver’s license or official military ID that “indicates the applicant is a citizen,” or a government-issued photo ID accompanied by proof of citizenship.

It also directed the commission to “take all appropriate action to cease” federal money for any state that fails to use the form that includes the proof-of-citizenship requirement, though a handful of states are exempt under federal law. Trump also wants the commission to revise standards for voting systems.

Election experts have said the changes are unrealistic given the process outlined in federal law, which includes reviews by advisory groups and a period for public comment. The last major update to the voluntary guidelines for voting systems took years and was approved by the commission in 2021.

“It’s practically impossible to demand that commissioners of the EAC create wholly new voting system guidelines based on highly questionable criteria within 180 days,” said David Becker, a former Justice Department lawyer who leads the Center for Election Innovation & Research. “It raises the question as to whether this was designed to create chaos since it cannot be practically and competently completed.”

Lawsuits say the commission is independent and not subject to Trump’s orders

Trump’s executive order has prompted lawsuits by voting rights groups, the Democratic Party and Democratic elected officials in 21 states. They say the president is exceeding his authority under the Constitution.

A lawsuit by 19 Democratic attorneys general argues that the commission was created by Congress to operate independently to protect elections and is required to make decisions “under standards of bipartisanship” and in collaboration with the states.

“The Elections EO seeks to eradicate all those safeguards — aiming to force the Commission to rubberstamp the President’s policy preferences on, among other things, voter registration and voting systems,” lawyers for the states wrote.

Justin Levitt, an expert in constitutional law who served previously as deputy assistant attorney general for the Justice Department’s civil rights division, said Congress established the Election Assistance Commission as independent of the president and did not give it any enforcement authority.

“It’s not like most of the other agencies in the federal government, and that makes a big difference in the amount that it can do or will do to further Trump’s agenda,” Levitt said. “Legally, that (order) has as much impact as if I told the EAC what to do or you told the EAC what to do.”

What happens next?

On Thursday, the commission’s Standards Board begins its annual meeting in North Carolina, where it will hear from election officials from across the country, many of whom are likely to have questions about the commission’s role under Trump’s order.

Earlier this month, the commission’s executive director sent a letter to state election officials summarizing the proof-of-citizenship requirement outlined in Trump’s order and asking how states would propose to implement it, if required, and what effect that would have on voter registration.

Chairman Donald Palmer said the agency was following the law, which governs the way any proposed change to the federal form can be made.

“That’s the process that we’ve done in the past, and that’s the process we did this time,” Palmer said. “In my mind, this is really to get information from the states.”

He praised the commission’s ability in recent years to find consensus and noted that the litigation would likely settle questions surrounding the executive order.

“We are in the executive branch, but we are an independent agency. And so those answers will – I’m sure those will be resolved,” he said.

Associated Press writer Ali Swenson in New York contributed to this report.