WASHINGTON—Donald Trump wants to take over the 2026 elections, though “steal” might be a better word.
No, the president isn’t planning to send another 1,600 invaders—Proud Boys and other assorted thugs—to rampage through the U.S. Capitol, as they did five years ago in an attempted coup. Nor is he asking secretaries of state to “find” ballots for him this time around.
Instead, he’s working to rig things to ensure certain votes either aren’t cast in the first place or don’t get counted even if they do make it to the ballot box.
Since his 2020 loss to Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden, Trump has tried to stuff state and local elections boards with his sycophants. In some red states and red sections of “purple” states, he’s succeeded. But it’s not enough.
He’s once again talking about election “fraud” in majority-Black cities like Milwaukee, Philadelphia, Atlanta, and Detroit and using that as justification for what he calls the “nationalization” of elections.
Trump has a four-part plan to commandeer states’ election machinery and have the federal government run the voting and the counting. Thus, no matter who you vote for at the ballot box this fall, it’s his administration that will take the tally.
Though many Republicans are downplaying the likelihood of Trump pursuing the plan, it’s clear that he’s got sone willing helpers on Capitol Hill, especially in the GOP-run U.S. House. Last year, lawmakers there pushed a massive voter restriction bill called the SAVE Act. They tried to insert it into the money bill Congress approved the first week of February and have signaled that they’ll try again.
There’s just one big thing wrong with Trump’s plan: It’s unconstitutional. But when did the U.S. Constitution, which Trump swore an oath to “preserve, protect and defend,” ever stop him?
Unconstitutional
Trump’s been quite open about what he wants to do and how he wants to do it. The federal government should “get involved” in running the voting, he says—everything from demanding voter registration rolls from every state to banning mail-in ballots.
All but a few states have already received such demands. Half (24) have refused, so Trump’s Justice Department is suing them. Voter rolls contain personal information, such as addresses, phone numbers, and Social Security numbers.
Besides, the Constitution is explicit: Article 1 Section 4 says the states shall run elections. “The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, 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 chusing Senators” it says.
“The Supreme Court has interpreted the Elections Clause expansively, enabling states to provide a complete code for congressional elections, not only as to times and places, but in relation to notices, registration, supervision of voting, protection of voters, prevention of fraud and corrupt practices, counting of votes, duties of inspectors and canvassers, and making and publication of election returns,” says an authoritative source lawmakers use, The Constitution Annotated.
Now listen to Trump at an Oval Office ceremony this week:
“If a state can’t run an election, I think the people behind me”—Republican members of Congress—“should do something about it,” Trump said. “Because, you know, if you think about it, the state is an agent for the federal government in elections. I don’t know why the federal government doesn’t do ’em anyway.
“The federal government should get involved. These are agents of the federal government to count the votes. If they can’t count the votes legally and honestly, then somebody else should take it over.”
The Constitution’s rather explicit about that, too. Its 10th Amendment, part of the Bill of Rights, says powers “not reserved to the federal government” are “reserved to the states or the people.” Running elections is one of those latter powers.
Needless to say, Trump’s drawn flak for his comments. But his prior attempts to rig the outcome this fall appear to have flopped, so now he’s turning to the takeover.
Gerrymandering prelude
First, Trump demanded Texas redo its congressional districts to elect more Republican U.S. House members and preserve or even expand the GOP’s slim control there. The party’s majority is now 218-214, with three vacancies. Defection by two or three Republicans would doom Trump policy initiatives.
The Texas GOP complied with Trump’s order and redistricted the state’s map, potentially adding five GOP congressional districts. But it boomeranged. Democratic-run states, led by California, redistricted, too. Independent analysts call the national result a virtual wash.
And it didn’t help Trump’s temper when the GOP won only one off-year House election—in Tennessee, narrowly, in a GOP-gerrymandered district Trump carried by double digits in 2024.
MAGA Republicans have lost everywhere else since he’s returned to power: Governorships in New Jersey and Virginia, open-seat congressional races, the New York City mayoral race, where Trump endorsed loser Andrew Cuomo, and even two statewide Public Service Commission seats in Georgia.
The latest Trump loss was a 14-point win for a Democratic Machinists union local president, Taylor Rehmet, running on a progressive platform, in a Texas State Senate district. Trump won there in 2024 by 17%. The district had elected Republicans since 1979.
So, with the gerrymandering effort and off-year elections all failing to decisively shift the political terrain in Trump’s favor, he’s turned to the election “nationalization” scheme.
Trump’s four-part plan
Mark Elias, an election law specialist who often works with Democrats, says Trump would cancel the 2026 election, if he could. Barring that, though, Elias sees a four-step Trump plan to rig the vote.
“First, he will falsely claim there is widespread illegal voting,” Elias said in a post at Democracy Docket. “He will merge his demonization of immigrants with his long-standing election denialism.
Second, he will “use the pretext of non-citizen voting to execute a partisan takeover of voting rules and election administration in swing districts with high concentrations of Democratic voters.”
Trump is executing part one already and trying to launch into part two. At the White House this week, referring to undocumented immigrants, the president claimed, falsely: “These people were brought to our country to vote, and they vote illegally.”
He said the GOP in Congress has to be “tougher” in cracking down on non-existent migrant voter fraud. “The Republicans should say, ‘We want to take over.’ We should take over the voting—the voting in at least many—15 places. The Republicans ought to nationalize the voting.”
Saying he must prevent illegal voting, Elias speculates that Trump may even “use federal paramilitary forces already at his disposal to block voting access.” That means ICE and other federal agents could potentially be sent to patrol polling places.
Third, Trump will “use the Department of Justice to seize ballots and take over vote counting.” Elias argues that recent raid to seize ballots in Fulton County, Georgia, was in part “a dry run to work out the logistics” of how this could happen in the future in more places.
“With the public now accustomed to ballot seizures,” Trump will have set the stage, Elias believes, for trying to seize control of elections in at least 15 states in 2026.
“If this targeted approach does not guarantee a Republican majority,” Trump will go even further—to the fourth part of his scheme—“a complete federal takeover,” or what Trump is calling nationalization.
Voter purge already underway
Trump’s demand that the feds take over elections drew immediate criticism from non-partisan groups as well, with Eileen O’Connor of the Brennan Center for Law at New York University leading the way. She says that even if Trump’s nationalization plan isn’t carried out to the last detail, the situation is still bad enough.
“The Trump administration’s campaign to undermine future elections is in full swing,” O’Connor warns. “One part is its bid to sweep up voter rolls across the nation, which began last spring and has now made its way to the courts.”
Trump’s Justice Department began its voter roll campaign in May, demanding the lists from at least 44 states and D.C. “Most have refused to provide these records and instead provided publicly available versions of their voter files,” O’Connor says, so Trump Attorney General Pam Bondi is now suing 24 of the states. Trump and Bondi have already lost in California and Oregon.
“Make no mistake about what these actions represent: An attempt to take over election administration, a role the Constitution grants to states, not the federal government,” O’Connor continues.
“The Trump administration has made clear one of its goals in collecting nationwide voter files is to run its own analyses and attempt to force states to remove voters from the rolls based on incomplete and likely inaccurate information.”
In plain English, that amounts to a voter roll purge. The past U.S. history of such purges shows voters most likely to be tossed off the rolls, almost always illegally, are voters of color. As Trump and his allies know, they mostly vote Democratic.
Multiprong attack on democracy
Then, added to the mix, is the House GOP majority’s own voter suppression scheme: The SAVE Act, or the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act, by its full name. It would require voters to prove they’re citizens before they can register to vote for a federal election.
The forms of proof would be limited, and the cost of getting them would be prohibitive for many. Only a passport or original birth certificate would suffice; driver’s licenses and tribal IDs won’t cut it. The legislation would invert the responsibility of eligibility verification from election officials to citizens and force them to convince the government that they have the right to vote.
In August, Elias explained this multipronged attack on democracy in stark detail and also predicted Trump will attempt to ban mail-in voting and decertify voting equipment he does not like. With fewer ways to vote, Elias expects the electorate to skew more Republican. If that fails, Trump would, he forecast, take over vote counting and ballot tabulation from the states. That is where we are now.
“The States,” Trump wrote on Truth Social, “are merely an ‘agent’ for the Federal Government in counting and tabulating the votes. They must do what the Federal Government, as represented by the president of the United States, tells them…to do.”
As a matter of constitutional law, this is flat-out wrong. “But Trump is not interested in following the Constitution. As we have seen before, he prefers to act by force” Elias said.
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