Feb. 6 (UPI) — President Donald Trump says U.S. elections should be nationalized, shifting away from the model of state control that has lasted nearly 250 years.
Trump shared his idea on former Deputy FBI Director Dan Bongino’s podcast earlier this week, continuing his longstanding position that widespread fraud is a problem for U.S. elections. That claim was repeatedly found to be lacking evidence when he tried to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
“The Republicans should say, ‘We want to take over,'” Trump said of nationalizing elections. “‘We should take over the voting in at least maybe 15 places. The Republicans ought to nationalize voting.'”
Why Trump wants to ‘nationalize’ elections
Trump’s proposal conflicts with the longstanding manner by which elections are governed and the constitutional limits on the powers of the president.
What Trump means by nationalizing elections is not immediately clear since he did not go into detail. There is also no legal definition for the term but Trump has made clear that he wants greater authority over the election process. He has taken steps such as issuing executive orders to call for proof-of-citizenship requirements and restrictions to mail-in voting.
Mark Lindeman, policy and strategy director of Verified Voting, told UPI that Trump’s distrust of the election process is the backdrop to the entire idea.
“The context in which to hear all of this is that Donald Trump has said repeatedly that the 2020 election was stolen,” Lindeman said.
In 2022, Trump said that all rules and regulations, including the Constitution, could be terminated in response to election fraud.
“A massive fraud of this type and magnitude allows for the termination of all rules, regulations and articles, even those found in the Constitution,” Trump wrote on social media in December 2022. “Our great founders did not want and would not condone false and fraudulent elections.”
Can the president change elections?
Regardless of the president’s desires, he does not have the authority to make any changes to the administration of elections. The Constitution outlines no role for the president when it comes to elections in Article 1, Section 4 of the Tenth Amendment, the Elections Clause.
“In our Constitution, a president cannot federalize elections,” Rebekah Caruthers, president and CEO of Fair Elections Center, told UPI. “The president, him or herself, cannot just dictate election changes.”
Federal judges have already blocked portions of Trump’s executive order seeking to restrict voting by mail, including blocking a proof-of-citizenship requirement.
Elections are administered by state and local officials. How states govern voter registration, ballot access, early or mail-in voting and counting votes may vary.
The decentralized manner of elections in the United States is a feature that gives states and local governments control over the process. Local volunteers and community members prepare and execute the election process and perform outreach to engage voters.
Decentralizing elections also decentralizes the power and influence over them. It is far more difficult for a single entity to wield an undue influence over election results when the processes and systems vary across tens of thousands of jurisdictions.
“It’s very hard to imagine an insidious attack that could affect a vast swath of the country and alter election returns without anyone being able to tell,” Lindeman said. “So for people who are worried about Italian satellites stealing election results, there are lots of reasons that can’t happen but it helps to understand that the election results literally are all over. They’re coming from many different sources and many different people are involved.”
What Congress can, can’t do with elections
The Elections Clause of the Constitution gives states the authority to set the time, manner and place of congressional elections. However, it also grants U.S. Congress the authority to override state laws and set minimum standards for federal elections.
Some Republicans in Congress have pushed back on Trump’s remarks, such as Senate GOP Leader John Thune, R-S.D., who said he is “not in favor,” and referred to it as a “constitutional issue.”
Trump’s remarks come as his administration and congressional Republicans are pursuing multiple election-related proposals.
While Republicans may have expressed reluctance about taking federal control over elections, they are mulling bills that would make uniformed changes to voter registration across the country.
Republicans have two bills circulating on Capitol Hill that attempt to make voter registration more restrictive: the SAVE Act and the Make Elections Great Again Act. Both bills introduce amendments to the Voter Registration Act to require proof of citizenship to register to vote in a federal election.
The SAVE Act was introduced in January 2025 and passed in the U.S. House in April. The MEGA Act was introduced in the House last month. Neither bill would transfer control over elections to the federal government but both have significant consequences for voting rights.
Caruthers said that instead of addressing issues with elections, the proposals add complexity for election administrators, including legal consequences.
“These are two tone deaf proposals,” Caruthers said. “It places massive burdens on state and local elections and exposes those officials to significant legal risks. An election official could be punished for registering an eligible American citizen if they fail to collect all of the right paperwork at the right time.”
“So on one hand we’re hearing some folks in Congress speak out against what the president just said but on the other hand we still see them introducing legislation that doesn’t help the administration of voting in this country,” she added.
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