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A coalition of major Democratic groups sued the Trump administration, seeking to strike down an executive order that would exert more federal influence over mail-in voting — including by creating lists of citizens who are eligible to vote.

The suit — filed in D.C. federal court by the Democratic National Committee, Democratic Governors Association and two major Democratic campaign groups — is the first major legal challenge to the executive order , which President Trump signed on Tuesday. The top two Democrats in Congress, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, are also listed as plaintiffs in the lawsuit.

Mr. Trump's order requires Secretary of Homeland Security Markwayne Mullin to put together a list of U.S. citizens who are eligible to vote in every state, using data from the Social Security Administration. It also directs the U.S. Postal Service to only send absentee ballots to people on each state's federally approved mail-in ballot list.

States that don't go along with the executive order are at risk of losing federal funding, a White House official told CBS News earlier this week. It's not clear what would happen if an eligible U.S. citizen is left off the list.

The plaintiffs in Wednesday's lawsuit argued the order unconstitutionally intrudes on Congress and the states' power to regulate elections, since the Constitution doesn't give the president any direct authority over how federal elections are conducted. Their suit cast the order as part of a gambit by Mr. Trump to "rewrite election rules for his own perceived partisan advantage."

"Our Constitution's Framers anticipated this kind of desire for absolute power. They recognized the menace it would pose to ordered liberty and the ways in which it would corrode self-government like an acid," the Democratic groups wrote in a 64-page complaint. "That careful division of authority has held fast against President Trump's attacks."