No, Trump does not have the legal authority or the practical ability to “nationalize” US elections, for all the same reasons he also didn’t when he issued an executive order a few months ago abolishing mail in voting. Elections are governed by states, and, to a limited extent, Congress. Not the executive branch.
There are plenty of very real, immediate threats to democracy to get worked up about right now. This isn’t one of them.
@mattblaze Ok so nationalizing by decree is out. What are the election dangers we/the US people should be worrying about?
@mattblaze I don't have the legal authority to drive 75 in a 60 mph zone, but if nobody writes the ticket, I get away with it.
@hellomiakoda but if your car can’t go 75, you can’t do itnin the first place. And there is simply no mechanism through which a US president can nationalize US elections, which are run by state and local governments.
@mattblaze the "practical ability" thing is the one I'm most curious about here.
He's broken laws (has he not?) so far, and people complied? Is that being mis-represented in media? e.g. there's lawsuits around tariffs? People told Trump "you can't do it, it's illegal", and yet he still did it, and his goons followed through? Why wouldn't the same work with elections, given he still has a compliant base of supporters, incl. among officials?
@dominykas It’s like asking why he can’t suspend laws of thermodynamics or declare himself to be eight feet tall. It’s simply not a thing he controls.
@mattblaze @dominykas He declares himself to be 6'3" and while that doesn't make it so. That's what's recorded in many records and what many choose to believe. If a similar number of people chose to believe that Trumps self appointed authority to nationalize elections was valid, what are the practical limitations there?
@mattblaze @dominykas Matt - first of kudos for your patience and for your long years of expertise in the topic (and the fact you engage with the public).
As an outside observer (not from the US, so certainly cannot appreciate all the intrinsic issues for the US), I think that the sentiment fueling the fear is based on things people see ICE (or similar schenenigans). The federal gov't seems to operate ICE outside the local law in many places, not adhering to the rule of law >>>
@mkilmo @dominykas Trump has done all sorts of terrible things. That doesn’t mean that his powers are unlimited, or that every terrible thing he might want to do is equally achievable.
What ICE is doing is terrible, but enforcing immigration laws has long (and uncontroversially) been an executive branch power. Running elections, on the other hand, simply isn’t.
@mkilmo @dominykas Elections are simply totally outside of what the president controls, not to mention what anyone involved in them thinks he controls. This is very different from almost everything else he’s done, which involved misusing or abusing existing presidential power in some way.
It’s like if he declared that Rhode Island is no longer a state. Everyone would just shrug.
Normally speaking. But aren't things changed now? His personal law firm, also known as DOJ is putting the screws on blue states to get voter data. And his personal police force, also known as FBI, has taken actual physical voter material from a state.
@mkilmo @dominykas And he’s done this ineffective stuff before, including with elections. A few months back he issued an executive order “banning” vote-by-mail, which had exactly no effect whatsoever. This is the same as that.
@mattblaze @mkilmo @dominykas Serious Q: do you trust J. D. Vance to certify the election count is accurate on January 6th 2028? (Assuming Trump lasts that long.)
Before the laws of thermodynamics we had folklore.
You can't put the genie back in the bottle but Trump can decimate it's followers with his threats.
@mattblaze @dominykas Wait. So you consider human laws to be of the same order as the laws of nature? That seems like a very dangerous assumption, a luxury of privilege.
@lastofthem @dominykas I may be rude, dangerously stupid, and endowed with unearned privilege, but Trump still has no ability to nationalize US elections.
@lastofthem @dominykas You know what’s *really* dangerous and full of privilege? Ignoring the details of how complex things you don’t actually understand(like how US elections work) work in order to make dramatic but unwarranted pronouncements of doom.
@mattblaze @lastofthem @dominykas what is your point now if I may ask politely?
@diasyy11 My point is what I said it was: Trump, for the reasons I mentioned, simply has no legal or practical ability to nationalize US elections.
@mattblaze @dominykas He has no legal ability. He has plenty of illegal ones he may or may not risk.
@dominykas @mattblaze laws of thermodinamics are not political laws. Not saying that states will comply, but he can push a lot on that.
@theklan @dominykas Feel free to worry about whatever you want. Trump federalizing elections, monsters under the bed, witches, whatever. I don’t really care. I said my thing.
@mattblaze @dominykas you don't to be rude. I wanted to note that political laws may change, it's the basis for an authoritarian regime.
@theklan @dominykas Wow! What an interesting and insightful point! I had no idea!
I dread when Trump makes these proclamations, because it’s a denial of service attack against me and every other election expert with better things to do than explain why this is BS over and over. But other than that, it’s just empty, meaningless blather.
@mattblaze What else did you expect from Donald Trump? What you say here applies to every stupid utterance the goon makes.
@khleedril no, some of the things a president says have immediate, highly consequential, impact. But this is not one of them.
I could go into detail about what the limits on executive and federal control over US elections are, and what the president could do to exert influence over them, but it would be extremely tedious and irrelevant to the actual reality here, which is that this is a nothing burger.
Scale of US elections:
51 states (and DC), each with its own election laws
Most ballot questions are for state and local offices and initiatives
~ 5000 local election administration jurisdictions (mostly counties and townships), which run election logistics
~ 115,000 local polling places, mostly borrowed for election day
~ 750,000 election day workers
~ 138,000,000 ballots cast in 2016, 82,000,000 of which at local polling places on election day.
@mattblaze I'm not an election expert, but it's interesting to compare this with the electoral apparatus in India, which is considerably larger, but also more federalised (and presumably more recent) and now completely dependent on electronic voting machines. (It's also been pretty thoroughly subverted in recent years, but that's as an aside, because I'm not mentioning it to disagree with your point about US elections.)
@mattblaze I should stop declaring things "non-starters" but Americans like and trust their local elections.
It’s hard to overstate just how huge this system is, or how many moving parts are involved. And almost all of it operates at the local level, governed by state laws and local practices and tied to the structure of local government.
This is not something you can just snap your fingers and take over by fiat or force, not to mention the fact that it’s all deeply embedded in federal and state constitutional structures.
@mattblaze
It aeems to me that his "power" across the board (that is, irrespective of which elections & where they occur) appears to be theatrical declarations to the press & on social media — which do affect many people when they hear/read them — and the general ability to create chaos and more intimidation by, for example, putting any sort of "enforcement" agents on streets & around polling places. Those could be ICE, National Guard, regular military, et al., legal or not.
Correct assumption?
@RunRichRun he has an enormous platform to promote chaos, as we saw on Jan 6. But that’s not unlimited. Being able to summon an angry mob to break things isn’t the same as being able to take over and actually run complex systems.
@mattblaze what do you make of the DOJ and DNI taking possession of Fulton county GA's 2020 ballot machines?
@pinsk not going to rehash this. I posted a lengthy thread about this it the weekend.
@mattblaze I'll look for it again, didn't see it, thanks
@mattblaze I disagree only to the extent that we should pay attention when Trump says his intentions out loud. No, be5 can't nationalize elections. But yes, he just admitted he wants to rig them, in a way that might bother even our slower fellow citizens.
