Donald Trump’s Plan for “Honest” Mid-Term Elections
He is preparing a partisan loyalty test for election officials around the country.
On August 18, Donald Trump announced on Truth Social that he would sign another executive order, following one issued in March, to “help bring honesty” to elections and to the 2026 mid-term elections in particular. According to Trump, its aims are to end to mail-in voting and to replace voting machines in favor of “watermark paper” ballots. Trump claims the legal authority to do this because it is “good for the country.” The president has no such authority, but it appears that his plans may include exploiting a particular feature of the American electoral process. That process is entrusted to election officials and administrators selected through partisan processes, and Trump is evidently seeking to make Republican state and local official support for “honest elections” a litmus test of party loyalty.
That a president lacks legal authority to achieve direct control over voting rules and election administration is not a close question. Article I, Section 4, Clause 1 of the Constitution (the Elections Clause) provides that “The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations, except as to the Places of chusing Senators” (emphasis added). It does not allocate to presidents the authority Trump is claiming. Federal district courts in the District of Columbia and in Massachusetts have already rejected this claim in enjoining implementation of the relevant parts of the March order. Even conservative legal commentators sympathetic to his dissatisfaction with mail-in voting won’t defend Trump’s deeply erroneous constitutional argument that, as he asserted in his tweet, “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…”.
It is also clear that his August 18 pronouncement is not an impulsive, early-morning communication inspired by hearing from Vladimir Putin at the Alaska summit that mail-in voting had cost him the “rigged” presidential election. At his Oval Office press conference with Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelensky, he repeated his intention to sign such an order, which he said was “being written now by the best lawyers in the country.” He placed the highest priority on this “honest elections” initiative, once again, as he did in his tweet, pairing it with border security as essential to the defense of the nation. In fact, he stated, it was “bigger than anything to do with redistricting.” He is clearly focused on these issues as part of a wide-ranging strategy for defending against potential losses in the upcoming congressional mid-terms. Whether he sees voting machinery and mail-in voting as “bigger” than redistricting, he is pursuing them both: gerrymandered districts in Texas and this attack on voting machines and mail-in balloting.
What is especially striking is Trump’s statements in his tweet and again at the Oval Office press conference that he is working toward these goals along with the “Republican party.” This is almost certainly a move to make participation in this plan for “honest elections,” at his direction, a test of party loyalty. Republicans at all levels of election administration will have the choice to be either with him or against him in defending against losing control of the House in 2026.
Republican state legislators in Texas met the first such test in moving to enact at Trump’s urging an aggressive mid-decade partisan gerrymander. In the last days before the state House voted, they left nothing to chance as Democratic legislators, who had left the state to block a vote on the gerrymandering plans, returned. The Republican legislative leaders demanded that Democrats sign a commitment to remain present for the vote and to leave the Capitol only if escorted by state troopers who could monitor their movements to ensure their return. The House leadership blocked one Democratic legislator from leaving the Capitol building when she refused to sign.
Trump could certainly call on Republican-controlled state legislatures to pass bills that support in various ways this drive against mail-in voting and voting machines. But he has other ways to apply partisan pressure in achieving these goals. As the Presidential Commission on Election Administration noted in its 2014 Report: “The United States runs its elections unlike any other country in the world,” and one of [its] distinguishing features…is the choosing of election officials and administrators through a partisan process. Some are appointed and others elected, but almost all are selected on a partisan basis.” It is complex, decentralized system run by local officials in more than 8,000 individual jurisdictions. In the last years since the “stop the steal movement” gelled, the vast majority of these officials across the country and the political divide have held firm against pressures to follow the president in his claims about “rigged” elections.
There have been a small but notable number of exceptions. Officials declined to certify lawful vote tallies until courts intervened or sought a change in the rules to give them broad discretion to do so. In one case in Colorado, Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters arranged to give unlawful access to county voting equipment to conspiracy theorists seeking to support Trump’s false claims about the 2020 election. She was prosecuted on state law charges, convicted and sentenced to nine years in prison.
These are only a few examples of how the American system of elections is vulnerable to partisan political pressure directed by a zealously committed president. The way it can all go from here under intensifying pressure from Trump can be seen in the ongoing tale of the Colorado prosecution. Trump has denounced the prosecution of Peters as a “Communist prosecution by the Radical Left Democrats to cover up their Election crimes and misdeeds in 2020.” At Trump’s direction, the Department of Justice sought to have a state court release Peters. An administration working with its party to undermine confidence in the integrity of the mid-terms can both demand Republican official support and offer protection in return. While a president cannot issue pardons for state crimes, he can ensure that the Department of Justice takes other action to aid in applying pressure to election officials. DOJ has reportedly started going down that path, exploring the options for criminally prosecuting election officials for not meeting the administration’s expectations for computer security protocols.
In broadcasting his conclusion that “VOTING MACHINES… ARE A COMPLETE AND TOTAL DISASTER” and that mail-in voting is a “SCAM,” the president is leaving no doubt that Republican election officials should share his view as members of the “Republican party” partnering with him in what he terms a “movement.” The President tried in his challenge to the 2020 election to have the department seize voting machinery to support his allegations of fraud, but while such an order was prepared, senior DOJ officials at the time successfully resisted. Those officials are now gone and those taking their places are far less likely to put up a fight in the Oval Office when the time comes. State and local election officials will likely now also face pressure to support in 2026 actions like the seizure of voting machines he could not achieve 6 years ago. The attacks on the 2020 election have already resulted in an extraordinary turnover of election officials who had enough of the “challenges, burnout, threats and harassment that [they have been] facing.”
It is impossible to identify every possible challenge to the process we may see in the months ahead. Federal and state courts will be called upon to respond as defenses are mounted under federal and state constitutional and statutory law. The success of any such legal defense will depend on the particular case and the forum in which it is presented. It is more certain that a well-coordinated attack would enable the president to seize at least the initial advantage, leaving the courts to catch up with severely destabilizing moves the administration may take, such as machine or ballot seizures and threats or actions to prosecute election officials who won’t get on the program.
Over the years, as well as at the present time, I have met and worked on a nonpartisan basis with election officials around the country, both Democrats and Republicans, who have been elected or appointed to discharge these responsibilities. I have never failed to be impressed with their professionalism. The vast majority from both parties—in red, blue, and purple states—do their jobs exceptionally well and without regard to partisan pressures. But it does appear that Donald Trump is preparing to subject them, and through them the system with its built-in partisan features, to severe pressure, and he will have federal law enforcement at his command for this purpose. The electoral process will be tested in unprecedented ways.