Dem
47
GOP
53
On Friday, Donald Trump issued this bleat on his Mussolini-would-have-loved-it social media site:
The Democrats refuse to vote for Voter I.D., or Citizenship. The reason is very simple—They want to continue to cheat in Elections. This was not what our Founders desired. I have searched the depths of Legal Arguments not yet articulated or vetted on this subject, and will be presenting an irrefutable one in the very near future. There will be Voter I.D. for the Midterm Elections, whether approved by Congress or not! Also, the People of our Country are insisting on Citizenship, and No Mail-In Ballots, with exceptions for Military, Disability, Illness, or Travel. Thank you for your attention to this matter! PRESIDENT DONALD J. TRUMP
In case you can't bear to read it, he is going to sign an XO requiring voter ID and banning absentee voting. We are surprised he didn't go whole hog and say the XO will also forbid people registered as Democrats from voting. The things he DID call for have just as much chance of happening, however, as banning Democrats from voting. Apparently, Chief-of-Staff Susie Wiles doesn't dare tell him that XOs are instructions to federal bureaucrats. They are not even suggestions to state election officials to do anything. Needless to say, no state election official is going to pay any attention to this nonsense. Some of them will indeed require voter ID and ban mail-in ballots—because their state legislature passed a law doing that. Absent a state law, none of them, not even the Republican ones, are going to do that, although a few clever ones might say they are going to require voter ID and thank Trump for the suggestion. But only in states where that is already the law will it actually happen.
Last year, U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, a Bill Clinton appointee, tossed out a previous XO requiring everyone to prove U.S. citizenship when registering to vote. She then wrote: "Our Constitution entrusts Congress and the states—not the president—with the authority to regulate federal elections." It is still true.
Why is Trump doing something that has no effect and will get widely ridiculed? The main reason is that he feels frustrated because Republicans in the Senate have undoubtedly told him that the SAVE bill, which would do the things he put in the XO, is not going to make it because the votes aren't there. It barely passed the House. When he is told he can't have something he wants, he lashes out. That's who he is. By threatening an XO, he is posturing to his base that he is strong. The base doesn't follow the news in detail and Fox is certainly not going to mention it when some district judge rains on Trump's parade and no election procedures change anywhere. (V)