Dem
47
GOP
53
On Monday, Donald Trump suggested nationalizing elections—that is, having the federal government run them so he could be sure that illegal immigrants, Democrats, and other riffraff couldn't vote. However, to save money, he would have the feds take over voting only in blue states. How conscientious!
This didn't go over well, in part because the Constitution calls for the states to run elections. Congress does have a small role, though. For example, Congress has mandated that all states have Election Day on the Tuesday directly following the first Monday in November (on account of Halloween, more or less). Congress can make some other rules but it can't actually give the federal government the authority to run elections. The president has no role whatsoever in running elections. It is one of the few areas where the veep has more power than the president. As president of the Senate, the veep gets to preside over the counting of the electoral votes in a presidential election. This must have been painful for Kamala Harris on Jan. 6, 2025, when she had to announce that Donald Trump won and she lost.
When reporters pointed this out to Trump, he said that the states are agents of the federal government. He obviously was not paying attention in sixth grade because the game plan was that the federal government was granted only the powers the states were unable to do themselves, like providing for national defense and regulating interstate commerce. The states are perfectly capable of running their elections and have been doing so for 250 years.
Trump has often claimed that illegal immigrants vote in blue states, but that is exceedingly rare and when it happens it is almost always due to green card holders who mistakenly think they can vote. To combat this nonexistent fraud, Trump signed an XO banning noncitizens from voting, something that is redundant since every state already has laws banning noncitizens from voting in federal elections (although some states allow cities to permit noncitizens to vote in municipal elections).
Trump also signed an XO requiring documentary proof of citizenship for anyone to register to vote. The courts have consistently thrown this out because it creates a new requirement for voting not in the Constitution. Trump has also tried to ban absentee voting, but again the courts have shot this down, saying it is up to the states to pass laws about absentee voting.
Some Democrats are worried that Trump really means it and will go to the mat for it to prevent the Democrats from winning the House in November. Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA) said: "This guy is deathly serious about stopping us from voting, bringing him to account. He's got the National Guard, he's got ICE, he's got the Postal Service. He can do a lot of damage. I always take him at his word. And then I multiply it by 10."
Some Republicans are pushing back on this. Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) said: "I'm a big believer in decentralized and distributing power, and I think it's harder to hack 50 election systems than it is to hack one. So in my view, that's always a system that's worked quite well." Part of Thune's dislike for any federal control over elections is that in 2020, the House, then controlled by the Democrats, passed H.R. 1, the "For the People Act," which would have forced states to offer election-day registration, expanded early voting and absentee voting, curbed gerrymandering, provided for small-donor election financing, made presidential candidates publish their tax returns, and much more. The Republicans filibustered it to death in the Senate. If Thune were to approve Trump's plans for more federal control over elections, that would open the gate to the Democrats passing H.R. 1 again next time they got control. He doesn't want that.
But other Republicans like the idea of federal election laws. One of them is Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R), who won national fame in 2020 when he told Trump, that, no, he was not going to look for another 11,780 votes for Trump in Georgia. Raffensperger is now running for governor and has changed his tune. For example, he is against "ballot harvesting." Sounds good, but what does that mean in practice? For example, disabled people in nursing homes often ask for absentee ballots and fill them in. Then one of the nursing home staff collects them all and brings them to a ballot drop-off location. That is ballot harvesting. Raffensperger's view is that the disabled people need to bring them to the drop-off place personally, even if they can't walk or are bedridden. That this would disenfranchise them in practice is fine with him.
The new pitch for nationalization of voting by Republicans is a 180° turn for the Party since 2016. While Russia was interfering with the 2016 election, Barack Obama wanted DHS to provide election security to the states. Hard as it may be to swallow, back then DHS saw Russians as the enemy, not Americans. Many Republican members of Congress and Republican governors balked at DHS providing election security, saying election security was none of the federal government's damn business. How that view changes depending who is sitting in the White House at the moment. (V)