Good-government groups in Nevada are slamming President Donald Trump’s call to “nationalize” elections, calling it an addition to a long line of threats to democracy.
The U.S. Constitution specifically delegates election administration to the states, yet Trump said on Monday that Republicans should “take over” counting votes in 15 states, alleging fraud with no evidence. On Tuesday, he doubled down, calling on the federal government to “get involved” if states can’t count their votes honestly.
Athar Haseebullah, executive director of the ACLU of Nevada, said elections are decentralized for a reason.
“It would be very dangerous for this administration, let alone any administration, to oversee elections, because there is no commitment on their end to upholding the rule of law,” he said. “For them, it seems to be almost entirely rooted in the outcomes that they want.”
The White House later walked back Trump’s comments, saying he is merely asking that people be required to show a government ID in order to vote. But last week, he sent federal agents to seize 2020 ballots from Fulton County, Georgia – an election that has withstood several audits. He’s currently pushing the SAVE Act, which would require people to show a birth certificate or passport to register to vote. Democrats say it would raise barriers for low-income voters, because those documents are not free, and under the bill, state ID cards or driver’s licenses would not qualify. The bill would also bar states from sending mail ballots to all registered voters.
Haseebullah said this is part of a larger effort to influence future elections.
“There’s no telling how far they’d seek to take their voter-suppression efforts if the SAVE Act were to pass,” he said. “If they were to end mail-in voting as a whole, what would stop them from just deploying ICE to every voting site where people of color are present?”
Last March, Trump signed an executive order that would stop states from accepting ballots that arrive after election day, and would ban most machine-readable codes used to tally ballots. Multiple judges have blocked key provisions of the order.
