Can President Trump really nationalize elections? This week at the round table for “The Opinions,” the Times Opinion national politics writer Michelle Cottle is joined by the columnists David French and Jamelle Bouie to debate what’s behind Trump’s latest fixation and whether MAGA actually wants elections nationalized.
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The transcript has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
Michelle Cottle: It’s been a hectic few days. Trump has repeatedly called to “nationalize” the election. He continues to peddle his election fraud nonsense and the groundless claim that a host of noncitizens are voting illegally. And the F.B.I. raided an election center in the great state of Georgia. This is all very troubling for me.
Jamelle, I want to start with you because we’ve talked about this a little before. Under the Constitution, elections in the U.S. are generally handled by the states. Shifting power to the president and the federal government would pretty much destroy that.
Does Trump’s idea have any teeth? Should I be worried about this?
Jamelle Bouie: Trump keeps saying they have to nationalize the elections, they have to federalize the elections, and this just depends on Congress at this point. The relevant part of the Constitution says that states shall handle elections, unless Congress decides they want to step in and do something.
The Voting Rights Act of 1965 is Congress saying, “We want to do something.” So, Congress has that authority. Unless Congress decides to lay down some standards, unless Congress decides that for whatever reason it wants to nationalize election administration, then I’m not sure that there is anything to worry about in that regard.
Otherwise, election administration in this country is extremely decentralized. It’s not even the case that it’s centralized in each individual state. It’s centralized in each individual precinct.
Setting aside the fact that the executive — or the president, specifically — really has no legal authority here, I want to be very clear about what I’m saying here. I’m not doing the thing where I say, “Well, we can’t do that. It’s illegal.”
I’m saying that for example, if you are the head of a board of elections or you lead your precinct in Georgia and Donald Trump calls you and says, “I want you to throw out ballots,” you can say to Donald Trump, “OK” — and then ignore him. There’s no authority he has over you.
Cottle: No repercussions legally.
Bouie: Right. Now, in terms of things to be concerned about, since Trump is very clearly worried about the outcome of the midterm elections, is worried about being exposed to political accountability should Democrats win office — he’s obviously going to try to whip up fears of voter fraud. He is already doing that.
The last thing I’ll say here — I don’t want to monopolize this — is that I actually think it’s really important to listen to how Trump talks about this. He doesn’t actually talk about it in terms of the midterms.
His mental model for the election is the presidential election. He is preoccupied with his loss in 2020 and losing the popular vote in 2016. Sending the F.B.I. to Georgia, to take materials from the 2020 elections, to me, suggests that all of this is less about subverting the elections that are actually going to happen and more about finding material for Trump to be able to say, “No, I actually won.”
I think it’s important if you’re thinking about this in terms of what could happen, what is likely to happen, what do they have the capacity to do — the energy here is all about, “I want to prove that I was right.” The energy here isn’t really, “How do I specifically target two dozen House races?”
Cottle: I get your focus on 2020, Jamelle. But I actually worry about this more because it just seems like he’s laying the groundwork, not even for meddling in this election — which I’m sure he would love to do — but he knows his party is in line to get a thumping and he wants to discredit that.
He’s already laying the groundwork for claiming that every Republican loss is a fraud and needs to be overturned — or, if nothing else, just cause massive civil disruption and public protests and conspiracy theories. That is actually what I most think he’s up to, but it can be both.
Bouie: Just on that point, the ability for that to have impact is very much a function of Trump’s own broader political standing. We can imagine a world — actually, it’s kind of hard to imagine — but we can imagine a world where Trump is a popular president, where his approval rating is 55-45, and he’s riding high.
In this world, maybe there is a midterm backlash, a small one, and Democrats win control of the House — in that world, I could see this maybe working. Not just because of Trump’s persuasive power, but because the actual observable political reality would seem to suggest that the public likes Trump.
But if we get to November and Trump’s approval rating has dipped from where it is now, if that’s where Trump is politically, then all of the screaming about fraud and illegals in the world isn’t going to change the fact that people can see with their plain eyes that the man is unpopular and that people are going to respond accordingly. Republicans are going to understand that people are going to respond accordingly.
So, I’m actually quite skeptical that this would work out — in part because it really does depend on not even how feasible the claim is or how realistic, but just his own political standing.
Cottle: OK, I am going to cling to that optimism. But David, I want you to jump in here and have at it.
David French: So, I’m going to disagree with Jamelle a little bit here. I think it’s time to distinguish between Trump and MAGA. I agree with Jamelle a hundred million percent that Trump’s real focus isn’t on some random congressman in Georgia’s Fourth Congressional District. He doesn’t care about that.
He definitely cares about the 2020 election. He wants to find something, to do something, to manufacture something where he can say, “Look, see, everyone laughed at me, but I really won.”
MAGA, however, is wanting to have a life after Donald Trump. And if you look at the Stephen Miller side of things, in many ways, what we’re seeing and what reporting is demonstrating is that he’s more ruthless often than Trump’s own instincts. This is a big part of MAGA — they’re more vicious, more cruel even than Donald Trump.
They also understand fully, and also often have a greater degree of sophistication — I always object when people call Trump dumb — but when you’re talking about political sophistication, thinking down, turning around the next corner, I don’t think Trump thinks in those lines.
I think MAGA is fully aware of what it has done. They are governing as if they will never lose power, and they’re very keenly aware of that.
When you see a situation where Trump is raiding Fulton County; Bannon is saying, “Get ICE all around polling precincts”; Trump is waiting for that phone call from Tulsi Gabbard; Tommy Tuberville is saying, “Get rid of voting machines” — you’ve got this environment where MAGA is very focused on the midterms because they’ve been governing like they’re never going to lose power.
They were the ones who had this theory after Trump won in November of 2024, that there was this vibe shift, that they were transforming American political culture — and all of that is crumbling. So, I think two things are true at once.
I think No. 1 — and this is hopeful — it is very difficult to hack an American election on a nationwide basis. It’s really, really hard, and that is because of the decentralization. So, when Trump says we need to centralize or nationalize, what he’s wanting to do is break through some of these firewalls if he possibly can.
But my concern is you have a cohort in the administration that is not backward-looking the way Trump is. It’s very forward-looking. So, I’m very concerned about the MAGA apparatus. I’m less concerned about Trump, the puppet master.
I think Jamelle’s 100 percent right — Trump’s obsessed still with 2020, he’s obsessed. But the Steve Bannons, the Stephen Millers, they have a generational project and I don’t think that they want to see their generational project go up in flames after two years, after 2024.
So, I think there will be every effort made that they can get away with to try on the front end to suppress the vote — and this is where ICE comes in.
Then on the back end, here’s what to watch: This is something that in the MAGA public they believe is proof of fraud, and it’s called the blue shift. Because before Trump, mail-in balloting didn’t cut one way or the other.
But then Trump comes along and says, “Mail-in balloting — corrupt, fraud, et cetera.”
And then the Democrats got this big mail-in balloting edge, and what that means is, in a lot of locations, the mail-in ballots are counted a little bit later. So you have the initial red move, followed by the blue shift. They use this as proof to this day.
To this day, you will hear Republican members talking about this as the Democrats see how many votes they need to manufacture, and then in comes the blue shift and they magically win.
Watch for this: After Election Day, in closely contested races where Republicans are ahead, watch for an enormous effort made to call into question the legitimacy of all counting going forward after that.
Cottle: I want to talk about the diffuse way elections are run and how hard it is and how many local officials and boards you have to play with.
A couple of years back, more than a couple now, with Steve Bannon’s precinct strategy, the goal was to flood the lowest levels of the electoral system — the people who are out there watching the votes and counting the votes and setting how your county handles ballots and things like that.
Flood those with MAGA activists so that the next time there was any question about fraud or who could vote or anything like that, they wouldn’t need to do anything illegal or overthrow ballots. They would just have their people in place who would automatically be inclined to rule anything in their favor.
They have worked on that in some ways. I mean, look at Georgia, where they’ve got a system in place where anytime there’s a question about local election administration, they can just say, “We need to bring in the state election board to deal with this.” It’s dominated by Republicans.
I do think you’re right that MAGA has been working very hard at the lowest levels to get these pieces in place. That said, I do still want to argue that Trump doesn’t care about this or that individual congressman, but if he loses control of the chambers of Congress, he knows that ends his running amok without any oversight.
The Republican Congress has been pathetic in terms of keeping him in a lane — any kind of lane. And he does know that if the Democrats wind up controlling something, that ends for him.
So, I do think — in addition to whatever humiliation he would suffer as the albatross around the party’s neck that sank it in the midterms — that he is not just backward-focused, even though he is obsessed with how everybody laughed at him and he can’t get over that he’s never going to get a chance to beat Joe Biden.
French: I just don’t think people realize how much a median county committee-level Republican in a lot of red areas is radicalized on this issue and willing to go to the barricades on this issue. So, that’s the X factor here.
It became obvious on Jan. 6 that he had a cohort of people who would be willing to charge the capital on his behalf. But that’s sort of the tip of the iceberg or tip of the spear, if you will.
You have a whole superstructure beyond that of people who have been extraordinarily radicalized on this issue from year after year after year of misinformation, disinformation: Illegals are voting, great replacement theory, etc., etc.
So, he has a lot of willing partners down to the precinct level who firmly believe that if Republicans lose, it’s because the fix was in.
Bouie: One thing that does somewhat frustrate me about these conversations, and you can sort of hear it in how we’re always talking about what Trump wants, what MAGA wants, what Bannon wants, what they want — there’s this thing that happens where this observation about what they want becomes in the discussion an assumption about their capabilities to accomplish and to do.
It also becomes this strange assumption that they are the only ones with agency. So, what matters is what they want, and if what they want is X, Y and Z, then we should assume that they maybe have the capacity to do it, and that represents a clear and present danger.
I guess I’m just skeptical on both ends. From my perspective, observing this presidential administration, observing this political movement — for all of the energy and the desire, the actual ability to execute is often not quite there.
Let’s look at the use of ICE. The reason this is possible has less to do with any particular operational sophistication from Stephen Miller and more to do with two decades of law and judicial settlement that gives the White House broad immigration enforcement authority.
What we’re really seeing here is what happens when you give really broad authority to a president who wants to abuse it. It was the path of least resistance.
Cottle: Yeah, we’re dealing with the reality we have, not the reality we wish we had.
Bouie: Right. But my point is that where Trump has been most destructive, it has been in those areas where there’s a path of least resistance, where there is just a “I want to do this and then I can do it” mechanism happening.
Where Trump is least successful is where that doesn’t exist or where it requires a bit of a heavier lift or it requires the coordination of various other actors who may have their own interest involved here.
So, when thinking about the upcoming elections or electoral subversion in general, my frame of reference here is: What is the path of least resistance for Trump to be able to do something? Those are the places where there should be concern.
But inasmuch as we are talking about MAGA wanting to take over at the precinct level or MAGA wanting to stop the counting, that requires, in a very logistical operational sense, a level of organization and sophistication that has not been demonstrated.
Moreover, there are other people with agency besides them. I’ve been emphatic about this recently and I think it boils down to that I’m just tired of the assumption that Trump and those around him are the only people with agency.
French: I think Jamelle’s point is well taken in talking about distinguishing intentions from capabilities. Because you can intend a lot of things or want a lot of things that you’re not capable of doing, which is one of the reasons I talked about this incredibly decentralized electoral system being very difficult to hack.
But if you’re talking about intentions combined with capabilities, there’s a lot of capability here that exists in MAGA in 2026 that did not exist in MAGA in 2020 — including an infrastructure of local activism, including an infrastructure of local legal strategies, etc.
That was really created in 2020 to try to contest the election, but it never really went away. In many ways, it’s only been enhanced. So, what you’ve seen since 2020 is steady progress by MAGA of obtaining more and more control in local and state election commissions, for example.
You had, for example, noise made after the Fulton County raid, the two Republican members of a state election board essentially saying: Maybe we need to be taking over Fulton County.
Now, they’re not doing it yet — but would they have the capability of doing that? Yeah.
And Jamelle’s exactly right that people have agency and tools they can use in response, for sure. But when you don’t control any of the elected branches of government, a lot of your tools that you have in response are quite limited.
You’re essentially resting on the incredible strength of institutionalized decentralized election administration that is very difficult to hack, running up against a political movement that attempted to corrupt it in 2020 and failed and has enhanced its capabilities since that time — and, in many ways, feels emboldened because they tried their best, they assaulted the capitol, then won and got back in power and got pardoned.
So, from that standpoint, I do think you can’t be alarmist in the sense of making up capabilities that do not exist. But they have shown that they can do some vicious things in the real world, as inept as they are.
The amount of oppression in Minneapolis, what they did in Midway Blitz in Chicago — they’ve set up detention facilities where thousands of people are being held in brutal conditions, and all of these things have happened in the real world.
I’m not saying they can stop a blue wave. But I’m saying that this could get very dangerous between now and then because the capabilities have been enhanced, sadly.
Cottle: Shifting slightly, guys, what do you think that state and local politicians, Democrats, Trump critics can do or should be doing at this point — either in preparation or to push back against these attempts of anti-democratic meddling or at least laying the groundwork for trouble in the midterms?
Bouie: In terms of what should be done, there are lots of practical things that can be done. If you’re worried about ICE, states can just make clear that federal agents cannot conduct immigration enforcement acts near polling places. That’s a straightforward thing that you can do, and federal immigration agents do have to follow state law.
You can work on further modernization of ballot counting, making sure that there is a process for ballots to be counted as quickly as possible, to preclude any conspiracizing about a blue shift or whatnot.
The Times ran this really interesting piece about the president’s calls for nationalizing elections, and it quoted Republican election administrators who themselves were affronted at the suggestion that they were running shoddy elections.
Personally, this isn’t baseless faith, this is just looking at how people with their own separate spheres of power tend to operate. I myself am not entirely sure that there’ll be all that many Republican election administrators who are going to want to completely upend the way they do things because an unpopular president is complaining about losing elections. I’m not certain about that.
This is a place where I just think public vigilance is actually going to be the most potent thing. If Americans are intensely apathetic about the election, then there’s going to be more opportunities for shenanigans.
But if Americans are very attentive or care very much, if they’re very motivated to go vote — and at this stage, it looks like there’s going to be at least a large number of Americans who can be very motivated to go vote — then the extent to which you can do much is actually radically reduced.
People are going to notice if you are trying to stop the vote count and they’re going to complain and they’re going to act and they’re going to react.
Cottle: The one thing that I want to throw in there just because I feel I should be as pessimistic as possible, is that I don’t think we’re counting enough on the fear factor. If you look around, poll workers have been driven out because they’re getting threats, they are worried about themselves and their family.
It’s a little bit like what we see with Republican members of Congress. They talk about being afraid for their safety and the safety of their loved ones.
Back before Trump II showed its true colors, you saw officials in Republican districts talking about how they were going to set up these systems where they had loyalists watching the vote count and they were ready to scream fraud at a moment’s notice.
I don’t know that that’s just a product of loyalty — it’s also a product of they don’t want to incur the wrath of a very vengeful, very scary president and his very scary ground troops, on some level.
Bouie: I don’t know, the administration’s goons executed people in the street in Minneapolis, and the reaction wasn’t that people left the street.
Cottle: I get that. But we’re talking in generalizations of what we’ve seen over the last several years.
French: When I look at solutions, I think of the problem. I tend to zoom it to a higher level. There are two things that have really made all of this possible for Trump to build what is genuinely a grass-roots movement that would contest an adverse electoral outcome no matter what.
He’s accomplished that two ways: One is misinformation and the other one is impunity.
The misinformation is obvious. It’s a fixed belief in millions and millions of Republicans that the 2020 election was stolen. So, that’s the misinformation.
And then the impunity is the pardons, the commutations, all of that. The sense from Minneapolis and other places, that these federal agents could do what they will, and there’s not going to be any accountability, there’s not going to be any internal discipline. You create this environment in which people feel like they can push it to the limit and beyond and they’re going to be OK.
That’s one of the reasons I have been such a — it’s almost like, “David, can you talk about something else?” Because I’ve talked so much about federal immunities and I’ve talked so much about legal immunities.
That is actually something that people can make concrete; there can be concrete actions. There is a Universal Civil Rights Act that is being proposed in many states, to bring Jamelle’s point into play, to impose state-level consequences for violations of federal constitutional law. I think states should enact that.
And then the other thing is, as long as we’re talking about potential shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security, shut it down to block federal immunity. We have a world where, right now, if you want to sue the federal government for violation of your civil rights, good luck.
You have an unbelievable immunity barrier that doesn’t exist for state and local governments. So, there’s a very simple law. It’s called the Bivens Act. It adds five words, just five words, to Section 1983, and what it will do is it will mean that you can sue the federal government the exact same way that you can sue state and local governments.
And guess what? Here’s the magical thing about that: Civil liability cannot be pardoned by the president. So, the president can keep somebody out of prison. He cannot keep somebody out of bankruptcy court.
We have these 17-point plans and all of these things you want to do with ICE. I’ve got a one-point plan: Strip their immunity. Then you apply the Constitution.
Cottle: I like the practical suggestions. That appeals to the planner in me. I could stay here and argue with this all day, but I think we have to land the plane and move on to your favorite part of the show: recommendations.
As always, David and Jamelle, tell me, what have I got to check out?
Bouie: Well, if you subscribe to Criterion Channel, which is just an app for the Criterion Collection — selected films, indie films, Hollywood films, all kinds of films — they have a really wonderful selection of films for Black History Month from a wide number of Black filmmakers.
So, I would highly recommend people check out that collection. I am, at the moment, watching a film by a filmmaker, Charles Burnett, called “Killer of Sheep,” from 1978, and it’s a slice-of-life drama about a working-class Black family — looking at the disappointments and the little triumphs of all the people in the family. It’s a really wonderful and well-observed film, and that’s sort of Burnett’s style.
So, I would recommend people check that out for something a little different than the usual Hollywood fare and something to mark Black History Month.
Cottle: Brilliant. David?
French: Michelle, I’ve been streaming. Always be streaming, Michelle. So, I’ve got two, but my recommendation is Hugh Laurie.
Cottle: I love Hugh Laurie.
French: Hugh Laurie is in the show “The Night Manager,” which after almost 10 years, is back. Tom Hiddleston, Hugh Laurie — phenomenal. Great, phenomenal.
Cottle: Be still my heart.
French: And then “Tehran.” “Tehran” is Hugh Laurie as a South African nuclear inspector. We’re still trying to figure out what his angle is.
I just have decided that I’m just watching Hugh Laurie, basically. Whatever.
For those who didn’t realize this, he came up as a comedian, and he was a regular in “Veep.”
“Night Manager” on Amazon Prime, “Tehran” on Apple TV. They’re both spectacular. They’re very well done. And just watch Hugh Laurie — you will not regret it.
Bouie: If you want to see some of Laurie’s earlier comedic work, you should watch the series “A Bit of Fry and Laurie,” which is Hugh Laurie and Stephen Fry. It ran from ’87 to ’95 or something.
Cottle: See, I was going to pitch “Blackadder,” which is a way, way deep cut. And he’s brilliant in that. “Blackadder” — you have to check that out too.
OK, so I’m going more specific. David, if I recall, you were with me on the affection for British, European police procedurals?
French: Oh, yeah, absolutely. I’m practically a British lawyer now.
Cottle: I’m going to call on you at some point to help me analyze these shows. “Blue Lights” — have you seen “Blue Lights?”
French: It’s on the list. I’ve heard it’s great.
Cottle: I’m watching the first season. It’s had three seasons. It’s following three starting-out, probationary police officers in Belfast.
So, you’re in Northern Ireland. Automatic kind of bump-up. In this season, you have these weird interactions between the local crime family and some international traffickers, but also these mysterious relations between different levels of law enforcement.
The local police aren’t allowed to touch the local crime family and you can’t quite figure out what’s going on, and there’s all these artifacts and callouts to the Troubles.
So, you have punishment shootings and this cache of guns that were not turned over after the Troubles were resolved.
And it’s this ensemble cast that’s sort of brilliant. “Blue Lights” — I highly recommend for those who share my obsession with those police procedurals.
I think that’s it for us. I am so grateful to you for coming in and helping us dissect things. Let’s do it again next week.
French: Thanks, Michelle.
Bouie: Thank you so much, Michelle.
Thoughts? Email us at [email protected].
This episode of “The Opinions” was produced by Vishakha Darbha. It was edited by Alison Bruzek and Kaari Pitkin. Mixing by Carole Sabouraud. Video editing by Tony Palmerio. The postproduction manager is Mike Puretz. Original music by Pat McCusker, Carole Sabouraud and Aman Sahota. Fact-checking by Mary Marge Locker and Kate Sinclair. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta and Kristina Samulewski. The director of Opinion Video is Jonah M. Kessel. The deputy director of Opinion Shows is Alison Bruzek. The director of Opinion Shows is Annie-Rose Strasser. Special thanks to Aaron Retica.
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