Part of the Series
Voting Wrongs
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Allies of the Trump administration are reportedly circulating a document that they say would grant the president sweeping powers over elections, including the ability to ban mail-in ballots, by declaring a national emergency over disproven allegations of interference by China in the 2020 election, a new Washington Post report finds.
Right-wing activists who claim to be in contact with the White House have drafted a 17-page executive order that would declare a national emergency over elections by claiming Chinese interference.
This order would give Donald Trump unprecedented control over elections. An advocate for the draft order claims it would give Trump the power to ban mail-in ballots and voting machines “as the vectors of foreign interference,” the Post reports.
“But here we have a situation where the president is aware that there are foreign interests that are interfering in our election processes,” advocate Peter Ticktin told the Post. “That causes a national emergency where the president has to be able to deal with it.” Ticktin is a lawyer involved with Trump’s failed lawsuit accusing Democrats of conspiring to damage him through allegations that his campaign colluded with Russia in the 2016 election.
Allegations of Chinese interference in the 2020 election by Trump and top administration officials were disproven in 2021 by the U.S. intelligence community, which assessed that China “considered but did not deploy influence efforts intended to change the outcome of the US Presidential election.”
Experts and lawmakers say that any such order would be struck down by courts. Voting rights group Democracy Docket described it as “blatantly illegal.” However, court action takes time — Trump’s tariffs were in place for over a year before being struck down by the Supreme Court, plenty of time for the Trump administration to sow chaos by interrupting or delaying elections. Meanwhile, the Trump administration has a history of openly defying court orders.
It’s unclear if the draft order has circulated within the White House directly, but Ticktin claims to be in “certain coordination” with the White House. The White House said officials are in contact with allies outside of the administration who share policy ideas, but they would not confirm or deny contact about the election draft order.
The report comes, however, as the Trump administration is increasingly threatening to cancel or interfere with elections indefinitely, and is seeking legal avenues to do so.
Earlier this month, trying to push for the passage of a sweeping voter suppression bill, the SAVE Act, Trump said that he is “search[ing] 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!” he said, signalling his intent to bypass Congress in order to seize control of elections.
Trump has repeatedly said that he is going to do everything in his power to bar Democrats from being elected, opining about Republicans nationalizing elections, rather than allowing states to run them, or suggesting that he should “cancel” the midterms altogether.
During his State of the Union speech this week, Trump said that “the only way [Democrats] can get elected is to cheat. And we’re going to stop it. We have to stop it.”
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