Top Democrats, voting rights experts slam Trump’s draft illegal order to seize control of voting
Following reports that anti-voting activists are coordinating with the White House on a draft emergency executive order allowing President Donald Trump to take control of voting, top Democratic lawmakers warned Trump is setting the stage to steal the midterms.
“Donald Trump has repeatedly said he wants to nationalize our elections, because he intends to steal them,” Minority Leader Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) and Rep. Joe Morelle (D-N.Y.), the ranking Democrat on the House administration committee, said in a statement.
“Once again, the President appears intent on manufacturing conspiracy theories so Republicans can desperately cling to power while their extreme agenda is being overwhelmingly rejected by the American people,” the lawmakers said. “We reject the legality of any executive order based on debunked claims of Chinese interference in the 2020 election.”
The draft order — which is said to be based on a conspiracy theory that China interfered with the 2020 election — would allow Trump to unilaterally ban mail-in ballots and voting machines on the basis that they are susceptible to foreign interference.
The order comes from MAGA activists who have been coordinating with the White House. One of the advocates for the order is Peter Ticktin, the attorney for Tina Peters, the former GOP Colorado county clerk who is currently serving a nine-year state prison sentence for her role in a 2021 voting system breach, in an attempt to find voter fraud based on election conspiracies.
In an email to Democracy Docket, Ticktin provided a legal memo that outlines how, exactly, he believes the president has the constitutional authority to declare an emergency and seize control of elections, which is said to be the basis for the draft emergency order.
Experts have shredded the order’s reasoning.
The two Democrats weren’t the only ones to speak out against the potential order.
“I have worked on 264 legal cases and matters against the Trump administration, including helping secure the injunction to stop his first executive order on elections,” Norm Eisen, the executive chair of State Democracy Defenders Fund and a former Obama administration official, said in a statement. “If he tries this, it will be 265. This is unconstitutional and insane.”
Other Democratic lawmakers slammed the order as another unlawful attempt by Trump to cling to power, and expressed confidence that courts would reject it.
“There’s no national emergency exception to Art 1, Sec 4 of the Constitution,” Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) said in a statement. “States regulate elections unless Congress passes law. That’s why Trump desperately wants to pass the save act to suppress voting. Courts will slap Trump down just like they did with his illegal tariffs.”
“When wannabe dictators like Trump feel their grip on power slipping, they start pulling stunts like this,” Sen. Reverend Raphaell Warnock (D-Ga.) said in a statement. “Stay vigilant. We will not let him get away with it.”
Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) said that, with this draft order, “President Trump is setting the stage to steal the midterm elections and set fire to our democracy — peddling the lie that 2020 was stolen. It was not.”
It’s not just Democrats decrying the draft order.
Michael Steele, the former chairman of the Republican National Committee, called the draft order — and the conspiracy behind it — “BS.”
“There is no ‘national emergency’ now nor in 2020 with respect to China interfering in our elections,” Steele said in a statement. “We do not have ‘national elections.’ We have 50 individual states holding elections under individual state laws and rules to elect a president. THIS is more BS. THIS is not: ‘Trump has never accepted defeat, while never finding evidence of widespread fraud.’”
Voting rights advocates similarly sounded the alarm that the existence of the draft order is further evidence that Trump is moving to wrest control of voting from the states, as he’s threatened to do several times.
“Reports that the President is preparing a sweeping executive order to seize federal control over American elections are not only alarming, they are also dangerous,” the League of Women Voters said in a statement. “This is another power grab from this Administration. This possible EO is not about election security. It is about political power and attempts to make it harder for eligible Americans to register, cast a ballot, and have their voices heard.
Pamela Smith, president and CEO of Verified Voting, said in a statement that, “invoking emergency powers over elections amounts to claiming make-believe authority in response to an imaginary emergency.”
“There is no factual basis for declaring an ‘emergency’ around voting,” Smith added. “Mail ballots, for example, are not a special vector for fraud, and they’re how millions vote, including rural voters, military and overseas voters, voters with disabilities, and first responders. Invoking emergency powers over elections amounts to claiming make-believe authority in response to an imaginary emergency.”
