President Donald Trump said Monday that Republican lawmakers should nationalize voting — claiming a power explicitly granted to states in the U.S. Constitution.
Speaking to right-wing podcaster Dan Bongino, who recently stepped down from his role as the FBI’s deputy director, Trump again falsely alleged that the 2020 election was stolen from him, and he urged Republicans to “take over” elections and nationalize the process.
“We should take over the voting, the voting, in at least 15 places,” Trump told Bongino. “The Republicans ought to nationalize the voting.”
Under the Constitution, the “Times, Places and Manner” of holding elections is determined by each state, not the federal government. Congress has the power to set election rules, but the Constitution does not give the president any role on that subject. Republicans in recent decades have often argued in favor of states’ rights and against a powerful federal government.
Trump’s demand comes less than a week after the FBI executed a search warrant at a warehouse in Fulton County, Georgia, which is at the heart of right-wing conspiracy theories about the 2020 election. The unusual warrant authorized agents to seize all physical ballots from the 2020 election, voting machine tabulator tapes, images produced during the ballot count and voter rolls from that year. Days before the search, Trump had claimed in a speech at the Davos World Economic Forum that the 2020 election was rigged.
On Monday, while speaking to Bongino, Trump said without offering evidence that there are “states that are so crooked” and that there are “states I won that show I didn’t win.” He also baselessly claimed that undocumented immigrants were allowed to vote illegally in 2020.
He then teased that there will be “some interesting things come out” of Georgia, but did not discuss the FBI warrant or its findings.
While Trump has repeatedly and baselessly accused states such as Georgia of running fraudulent elections, U.S. national security officials have said they found no evidence of widespread fraud in the 2020 election, and numerous courts rejected claims of election irregularities as unfounded.
This is not the first time Trump has tried to minimize states’ roles in the running of elections. In August, while complaining in a Truth Social post about mail-in voting, Trump said he would sign an executive order that would “help bring HONESTY” to this year’s midterm elections, arguing that states are meant to follow federal instructions when it comes to voting.
“Remember, the states are merely an ‘agent’ for the Federal Government in counting and tabulating the votes,” Trump wrote then. “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.”
It is not clear what Republicans in Congress could do if they were to “take over” elections, as Trump suggested. While Congress has exercised its power on elections rules throughout history by, for example, creatinga national Election Day, or by requiring states to ensure that their voter rolls are accurate, lawmakers have historically allowed states to run elections under their own laws and procedures.
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