Bob Bauer at Executive Functions:
On March 25, President Trump issued a sprawling executive order on Preserving and Protecting the Integrity of American Elections. The order focuses on the “integrity” of federal elections. It repeats but does not substantiate Trump’s claims that our elections are rife with fraud, including extensive noncitizen voting. The order appears to be setting the foundation for presidential intervention in the administration of elections in 2026 (and beyond). And it does so in a plainly unlawful way by supplanting the states’ constitutional authority to regulate the “Times, Places and Manner” of elections except where Congress elects to prescribe its own rules for federal elections. The Constitution does not confer on the president any share in this rule-setting authority. Already 19 states and other plaintiffs have filed suits to challenge the order’s constitutionality.
This first in a series of posts on Trump’s voting executive order focuses on one of the likely points of attack in Trump’s elections strategy: refreshing claims from 2020 about rigged or faulty voting machines and providing him with a new argument for seizing these machines in 2026.
And it concludes:
To read this executive order as evidence of planning for an attack on the 2026 elections is not to indulge in undue alarmism. The history, context, and express terms behind this order justify concern. In any event, I have hoped to provide enough on which readers may reach their own conclusions.
This much is clear: Trump does not accept that he lost the 2020 presidential election, as he restated again in his Easter message wishes to, among others, “all of the people who CHEATED in the 2020 Presidential Election.” Trump continues to insist that he was the victim of fraud and that the voting system, including the machinery in use throughout the country, remains susceptible to rigging yet again. He tried four years ago to do something about it in a bid to remain in office. He failed because the lawyers and officials then in place in the White House and key departments and agencies stood in his way. It is far from clear that this time there is anyone there to take that stand.