A draft emergency executive order to declare a national emergency to allow President Donald Trump to take unprecedented control over voting is being circulated by anti-voting activists who said they are in coordination with the White House.
Voting rights experts, democracy advocates, and at least one state election chief said Trump doesn’t have the authority to claim such powers — and any attempt would be blatantly unconstitutional.
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.
The Elections Clause of the U.S. Constitution explicitly gives states — not the president — sole authority over elections.
If Trump successfully fixes this election…
A lot of Americans wouldn’t only tolerate Trump fixing the election, they’d support it. Celebrate it, even.
Much of the rest of America doesn’t fully appreciate the threat. Many are just oblivious, but others are complacently holding on to their faith in our legal and political institutions. They believe in our system, and they believe it will ultimately hold up against the threat of a fascist takeover. I hope they’re right, but I don’t share their conviction. I think our institutions are far more vulnerable than many of them realize. Frankly, I think they’re unwavering devotion borders on hubris.
And my concerns about the integrity of our system are not baseless. I have seen our systems tested multiple times over the past few decades, essentially my entire adult life, and I would say the resiliency of our system has been… mixed, at best.
What do you mean? We have infinite money, don’t you remember that glitch? 1970s crisis, we just printed our way out. 2000 dot-com bubble, printed our way out. 2008 housing crisis, then COVID, … guess what we did both times. We just print our way out of our problems; problem solved.
If Trump destroys us, we’ll just print little Trump Cash cards on the back of freshly synthesized plastic cutouts made from the byproduct of his glorified coal companies running on the blood, sweat, and tears of our children.