It’s unlikely centuries of precedent would be overturned to nationalize US elections process, despite calls from Donald Trump, experts say.
The US president made repeated comments this week that the Republican Party — which holds slender majorities in both houses of the US Congress — should “do something” about how elections are run in the US.
“The federal government should get involved,” Trump said, repeating oft-stated claims of widespread electoral fraud in an Oval Office press conference on Tuesday.
It was an extension of more extensive comments made on a call-in to former FBI deputy director Dan Bongino’s podcast, where he said federal administration in “at least 15 places” was needed.
While Trump has, for years, claimed the existence of widespread voter fraud or irregularities in the US, only small instances have ever been uncovered, and never with any bearing on declared outcomes.
Donald Trump has made several calls for election administration to be controlled by the federal governmentImage: Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images
Though the president may wish to see elections run by the federal government, it would overturn one of the founding principles set out in the US Constitution: That the states and Congress have ultimate oversight of elections.
“It has been baked in that the states are largely in charge of the election process, and that the federal government can set or override rules for that process if they wish, but it’s very specific that that has to be done through Congress and not through lone executive action,” said Justin Levitt, a constitutional and law of democracy scholar at Loyola Law School who was a nonpartisan policy adviser for democracy and voting rights during the Biden White House.
The reason why the founders implemented this division of power is straightforward. “They didn’t want one federal executive in charge of his or her own election process,” Levitt said. “They saw a danger for corruption and for not actually following the will of the people, so they put the states in charge.”
A patchwork of constitutionally-baked rules
Because the states are constitutionally charged with running elections, and each state sets its own rules, American citizens may vote — or be excluded from voting — depending on where they live.
State-to-state variations impact how votes are counted, early voting and mail-in ballots, voter registration, voting hours — even whether partisan appointees can be made to control election processes.
This approach contrasts with national elections in other federations. Germany, for example, appoints an independent federal returning officer and electoral committee to oversee the election of a new Bundestag — the German parliament — via its complex double-vote system. However, the voting and counting of ballots is conducted at the state and district level.
German politics: Elections & voting in Germany
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National elections in Canada, Australia and India are organized and run by independent federal electoral commissions. These bodies are nonpartisan and operate free from political interference. Brazil — another federation — is different again, with a specific judicial body responsible for overseeing national elections.
Nationalizing election processes could have merit in the US as a way to introduce more uniform rules across the country, and attempts have been made by Congress in previous years to do so.
“But this fragmented system has been around for so long, and by and large, each state likes the rules and procedures they have,” said David Kimball, chair of political science at the University of Missouri-St Louis.
“Trying to impose more uniformity, particularly around some of the things that President Trump talks about the most, like requiring people to show a photo ID or requiring people to show proof of citizenship when they register, things like that would be very difficult.
“I think there would be a lot of state opposition to some of those things,” he added.
There’s also the logistics. The US is one of the largest and most populous countries in the world, crossing multiple time zones, with thousands of local election districts coordinating ballots.
Nationalizing congressional and presidential elections would require new authorities to effectively replace those large-scale systems.
“I don’t know that federal officials could run the election process, even if they wanted to,” said Levitt.
Presidents can’t flex muscle over elections like other realms
Donald Trump has uniquely tested the assumed limits of his position during his second term, with modest success, though he has not been without his challenges — and challengers — in the courts.
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But he is, Levitt said, “uniquely powerless” when it comes to modifying how US elections are conducted.
“The American president has an enormous amount of power to do a lot of things, but running elections is one of the very few places where he’s got almost no power on his own,” Levitt said.
His analysis is that the recent call is an attempt by the president to project power ahead of midterm elections, usually seen as a referendum on the man who occupies the Oval Office, and which are currently predicted to see control of the House of Representatives swing to the Democrats.
“Part of this is just an expression of his desire to have more control, a desire that will go unfulfilled,” said Levitt, “I think an even bigger part is his desire to project power that he does not have.”
Trump’s persistent, yet unproven, declarations of widespread voter fraud, now paired with his calls for election nationalization, do have an impact on the smooth running of the process.
Kimball said the claims have “definitely made life more stressful for the men and women who actually administer our elections at the state and local level.”
“It’s difficult to work, or more difficult to work, in that environment,” he added.
Edited by: Rob Mudge
