Provision Trump supporters cite for nationalizing elections really proves he can’t: expert

William Galston, a centrist thinker and senior fellow at Brookings Institution, wrote in a Wednesday editorial that President Trump does not have the authority to nationalize elections. And the United States Constitution itself plays a big role in why.

“To clarify this issue, the place to begin is the Constitution — specifically, Article I, section 4,” Galston writes, quoting the relevant provision which states that election logistics “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 choosing Senators.”

Concluding that “this language plainly divides authority over congressional elections between the states and the U.S. Congress, with no independent role for the president,” Galston moves on to Article II, section 1 of the United States Constitution “which vests the ‘executive power’ of the federal government in the president” and is cited by Trump supporters to justify him nationalizing elections. Yet according to Galston, this “cannot be cited as a source of ‘inherent’ power in areas where the Constitution has expressly placed this authority elsewhere.”

Ultimately Galston disputed Trump’s claim that he can nationalize elections under “the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States.” Instead, Galston argued, “the president has no independent constitutional authority to determine election procedures” and “his only authority is to enforce the laws that Congress has written and that he (or his predecessors) has signed into law.”

Thinkers even farther to the right than Galston share the centrist’s skepticism toward Trump’s nationalization plans. Republicans Tom Corbett and John Jones III, respectively Pennsylvania’s former governor and a former US district court judge, have also condemned Trump’s nationalization ambitions.

“The constitution’s pretty clear that the manner of the elections is left up to the states, and not to the federal government,” Corbett told the Pennsylvania Capital Star. “The president would like to have it differently, but I don’t think he can have it differently.” Like Galston, Corbett also pointed to Article 1, Section Four of the Constitution to prove his point. Jones, speaking to CNN, made the same point.

“When I went on CNN central, I said to the anchor who was interviewing me, ‘I mean this respectfully but very directly, the president of the United States needs to read the Constitution,’” Jones told the Capital Star. “It’s pretty clear from the overwhelming pushback since then that everyone recognizes you can not, without a constitutional amendment, ‘nationalize’ elections to the extent the federal government takes over. That’s just a nonstarter.”

Trump has repeatedly threatened to nationalize the 2026 midterm elections because early polls and election results suggest he could lose control of one or both chambers of Congress. The methods he could use to steal the midterm elections include having the military seize voting machines or tamper with ballots by ordering states to hand over their election information. In response, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries has warned that “what Donald Trump wants to do is try to nationalize the election. Translation: steal it. And we're not going to let it happen.”

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