Trump wants to stop states from voting by mail and using voting machines : NPR

A man photographs himself by depositing his ballot in an official Ballot box in Philadelphia on October 27, 2020.

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President Trump announced on his social media site, Truth Social on Monday, which he planned to “lead a movement” to get rid of sending ballots and voting machines in the country before the mid-term elections next year.

Part of his plan includes the signing of an executive decree which prohibits states from using voting ballots by mail and potentially certain voting machines. He said, without proof, that the voting machines are “very inaccurate”, as well as more expensive and less reliable than the counting of paper ballots.

“We are going to start with an executive decree which is currently written by the best lawyers in the country to end letters by ballots because they are corrupt,” Trump said at a meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy at the White House on Monday. “And it is time for Republicans to become difficult and stop it because Democrats want it. This is the only way to appear.”

Although Trump himself has urged his supporters to vote using postal bulletins before the 2024 presidential election, the Democrats were much more likely to vote using postal bulletins, compared to the Republicans, since the 2020 elections. This gap has only expanded in the last elections, because the states led by the GOP adopted more restrictions on this method of voting. But legal experts say Trump does not have the legal power to tell states how to organize their elections.

Michael Morley, professor at Florida State University College of Law, told NPR that the Constitution gave the Congress – and not to the President – the power to regulate the federal elections.

“There is really nothing that executive power can do alone in terms of direct mandates,” he said.

Any modification of the president’s legal authority would require Congress measures, said UCLA law professor Richard Hasen.

Unless the president has a certain theory under which he could try to prohibit certain types of voting machines or to try to ban mail in voting bulletins by applying an existing federal law, he would need the cooperation of the congress, “said Hasen,” which, I think that it would not be likely to have federal interference with the way in which mid-mockery elections will be organized. “”

David Becker, executive director and founder of the non -profit non -supporting center for innovation and electoral research, said that the founders had deliberately gave the president any role in the way the elections are carried out.

“Hamilton has planned and clarified in Federalist 59 that a democracy must diversify the power of the elections in order to protect itself from an overly zealous framework, and therefore the power of the elections would reside with the many states,” he said at NPR in a statement.

It would also be a logistical section to upset the way states organize their elections as primaries in mid-term come closer, said Matt Germer, director of Right-Of-Center R Street Institute, a Washington-based reflection group.

On the one hand, any decree is likely to face disputes, which could take some time to settle. And then, the States should probably adopt new laws or implement new voting plans before the vote.

“In some places, I think things like restricting voting by mail would mechanically force more people to come and vote in person,” said germinating. “And they must ensure that they invest the resources in a person in person to perhaps explain this.”

He said officials should find more locations to accommodate polling stations. And he said volunteers should be trained and facilitate these voting places.

“It would be a huge company and I think that in a realistic way, it is very unlikely that it can end by mail or end the use of very specific voting machines for 2026 now,” said germinating.

Barbara Smith Warner, Executive Director of the National Voting at Home Institute, who advocates a wide use of postal vote, said that it would be almost impossible to get rid of the vote sent by post in such a short time. But she said, she believes that the greater effort here is to “destabilize” the elections of next year.

“The efforts to eliminate this ignore the facts and really try to undermine confidence in our entire elections,” she said. “This is still another takeover of federal surpassing in the rights of the States to direct their own elections.”

Hasen said Trump had tried to interfere in the elections before by trying to reverse the results of the 2020 elections, which Trump lost, so he said “it would not be surprising” if he was trying to interfere with a major election again.

“And it is therefore time to take preparations on the part of the states and the parties of the courts and others to ensure that the elections we carry out in 2026 take place with equity and integrity,” said Hasen.