Republicans Urged by President to 'Nationalize Voting' in an Attempt to Unconstitutionally Grab Power From States

Donald Trump repeatedly lied that the 2020 election was “stolen” from him because he can’t stand the idea that he was defeated. The midterms are expected to result in huge losses for Republicans given the widespread disgust with his presidency. So Trump is desperately flailing around looking for ways to really steal the elections and avert that outcome. The effort won’t succeed, but he is calling for an unconstitutional federalization of election administration.

The Washington Post reports:

President Donald Trump said Monday that Republican lawmakers should nationalize voting—claiming a power explicitly granted to states in the U.S. Constitution.

Speaking to right-wing podcaster Dan Bongino, who recently stepped down from his role as the FBI’s deputy director, Trump again falsely alleged that the 2020 election was stolen from him, and he urged Republicans to “take over” elections and nationalize the process.

“We should take over the voting, the voting, in at least 15 places,” Trump told Bongino. “The Republicans ought to nationalize the voting.”

Under the Constitution, the “Times, Places and Manner” of holding elections are determined by each state, not the federal government. Congress has the power to set election rules, but the Constitution does not give the president any role on that subject. …

On Monday, while speaking to Bongino, Trump said without offering evidence that there are “states that are so crooked” and that there are “states that I won that show I didn’t win.” He also baselessly claimed that undocumented immigrants were allowed to vote illegally in 2020. …

While Trump has repeatedly and baselessly accused states such as Georgia of running fraudulent elections, U.S. national security officials have said they found no evidence of widespread fraud in the 2020 election, and numerous courts rejected claims of election irregularities as unfounded.

This can be taken as an admission that Trump expects his party to lose the midterm congressional elections, so he is preparing either to disrupt them or to deny the results. But the Constitution gave Congress a limited role in elections—and the president no role at all—precisely to prevent this.

The Executive Watch is a project of the Institute for the Study of Modern Authoritarianism, and its flagship publication The UnPopulist, to track in an ongoing way the abuses of the power of the American presidency. It sorts these abuses into five categories: Personal Grift, Political Corruption, Presidential Retribution, Power Consolidation, and Policy Illegality. Click the category of interest to get an overview of all the abuses under it.

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