Why are leftists and independents periodically worrying about federal interference in voting? Here’s one report:
Pro-Trump activists who say they are in coordination with the White House are circulating a 17-page draft executive order that claims China interfered in the 2020 election as a basis to declare a national emergency that would unlock extraordinary presidential power over voting.
President Donald Trump has repeatedly previewed a plan to mandate voter ID and ban mail ballots in November’s midterm elections, and the activists expect their draft will figure into Trump’s promised executive order on the issue. The White House declined to elaborate on Trump’s plans.
“Under the Constitution, it’s the legislatures and states that really control how a state conducts its elections, and the president doesn’t have any power to do that,” said Peter Ticktin, a Florida lawyer who is advocating for the draft executive order. Ticktin attended the New York Military Academy with Trump and was part of his legal team that filed an unsuccessful 2022 lawsuit accusing Democrats of conspiring to damage him with allegations that his 2016 campaign colluded with Russia. [WaPo]
This Ticktin fellow claims the President will be able to ban mail-in ballots and voting machines; he doesn’t seem to realize mail-in ballots are of importance to the military and citizens who are overseas, while voting machines, even if they do unsettle me, will delay summations for, in some areas of the country, weeks. In the latter case, reliable Republican voters may feel disenfranchised.
Perhaps he’d be more trustworthy to the far-right if he just appealed, publicly and repeatedly, to the divine, although manipulating the election certainly discredits the divine’s power, now doesn’t it?
So what has the right in a tizzy, as a few generations ago used to say?
And I continue to say neither Party is in good shape if they have to depend on enthusiasm. The Democrats have a big enough advantage that they may pick up sixty seats next election – but based on the high unpopularity of not only President Trump, but the entire Republican Party.
