President Trump’s recent decree that the states must follow his orders to get rid of voting machines and voting by mail is wrong in every way. It’s wrong on substance, wrong on policy and wrong on the Constitution.
It’s one of the many ways Trump is trying to take power away from voters to maximize his control over the country now and in the future — and that’s wrong, too.
Trump’s obsession with discredited conspiracy theories about mail-in ballots and voting machines is tied up with his refusal to accept that voters rejected him in 2020.
The man who can’t stop talking about a supposedly rigged election wants to rig future elections to give Republicans more power than they deserve. Abusive redistricting is part of that plan. Making it harder for millions of people to vote is another.
The president’s insistence that he can force states to abandon voting systems that have been proven to be safe, accurate and accessible in favor of less accurate and more expensive hand-counting of paper ballots is a sign of how far his vision of a dictatorial presidency has gone to his head.
It is also giving us one more test of Republican lawmakers’ willingness to abandon principle and the rule of law to stay on Trump’s good side.
The conservative editors of the National Review helpfully pointed out the constitutional flaws in Trump’s scheme, but I’m still not terribly optimistic that congressional Republicans will pass this test. It’s not exactly breaking news that Republicans have repeatedly abandoned previously held positions to align themselves with the score-keeping Trump White House.
Still, it’s worth remembering how Republican leaders responded when Democrats tried to pass legislation to expand federal voting rights protections and overturn some voter suppression laws passed by Republican-led states. Congressional Republicans opposed the legislation, warning that it would “federalize our elections” and “unconstitutionally erode the ability of states to oversee elections.”
Just last year, Senate Judiciary Committee Republicans claimed that the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act would “federalize our state-run election system and unconstitutionally override states’ ability to oversee their elections.”
Rep. Wesley Hunt (R-Texas) said “It’s about federal control over state and local elections, which by the way is unconstitutional.”
But that was all before Trump declared that “the States are merely an ‘agent’ for the Federal Government in counting and tabulating the votes. They must do what the Federal Government, as represented by the President of the United States, tells them, FOR THE GOOD OF OUR COUNTRY, to do.”
Let’s see if Republicans’ appeals to federalism when opposing congressional action to protect voting rights disappear when they’re faced with a punitive Trump asserting the power to make it harder for many people to vote, including people with disabilities.
That would also be the outcome of the GOP’s SAVE Act and other efforts promoted by the MAGA movement’s “election integrity” machine.
This whole scenario was made even more strange and troubling by the fact that Trump cited Russian dictator Vladimir Putin as a source for his bogus claim that no other nations use voting by mail. It’s not even close to being true. And why would anyone, much less Trump, argue that Putin should have anything to say about how the U.S. runs its elections?
The truth is that dozens of other countries use vote by mail. So do many states, including red states, which have run successful vote by mail programs for years.
Having mail voting as an option reduces challenges to voting for millions of people, including those with work and family obligations as well as older and disabled voters. Having the option to vote by mail increases voter participation, something our election policies should encourage, not discourage.
In fact, Trump’s obsessions may not be all that helpful to Republicans in many states who invested millions of dollars to catch up with, and in some places surpass, Democrats’ traditional strength in turning out voters by mail.
Even if Trump isn’t successful in forcing change on the states by next year’s midterms, his rhetoric denouncing mail-in balloting may confuse or discourage some of his supporters.
White House rhetoric since Trump’s “states must do as I say” post suggests that others in the administration recognize that the president cannot simply upend election systems by executive order, and that he’ll have to put pressure on Congress and state legislators to get what he wants.
Given Republican officials’ eagerness to do just about anything to stay on Trump’s good side, that might not be much of an impediment to his destructive plans.
Trump’s flagrantly unconstitutional attempt to take power away from the voters must be resisted on all fronts. The Supreme Court and congressional Republicans who have done little to date to protect Americans from an abusive power-hungry president must find the will to step up.
Svante Myrick is president of People For the American Way.
Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to The Hill.
Comments