Adam Watson (00:00) Welcome back to “Simplifying the State,” the podcast where we break down politics so you don’t have to try to figure out why the president of the United States is suggesting federalizing elections. As always, I’m Adam Watson.
Nicholas Perrin (00:11) I’m Vermin Supreme, Nicholas Perrin.
Drew (00:14) And I’m Drew Garfinkel.
Adam Watson (00:16) All right. Now, before we start, if you would be so kind as to rate us and follow the podcast wherever you are listening and to share it with anyone you think would enjoy it, like Bad Bunny. All right. Thanks for that Vermin Supreme tangent, by the way. Great start to the episode.
All right. So today’s topic is going to be about how, you know, President Trump suggested that the federal government should take over elections, and the broader implications of how the government has been getting involved in elections over the last couple of years. So what are your guys’ initial reactions to hearing the president suggest that the federal government should perhaps take over the elections of some states?
Drew (01:00) I want to start by saying that states handle their elections right now, and what he’s proposing is nationalizing them, which means having federal involvement in them. So I think that’s definitely not a good thing because the way things are now, even though Trump would claim it’s not correct, elections are pretty fair right now. How they’re handled right now with state control—and I don’t think we need to see this. I think he’s just, like, trying to put his fingers on this.
Nicholas Perrin (01:32) Based on a lot of other things we’ve seen from him—I mean, like, my first reaction was like, OK, he’s just saying stuff. But, you know, I thought about it for a bit, and I looked into it more, and then alarm bells started to play in my head. This is not necessarily a bad thing. At best, it’s just unnecessary, you know? At its worst, it’s troubling.
Adam Watson (01:58) Yeah, definitely. Yeah, so my initial thoughts were sort of what you said, Nicholas, that this is just one of those things he does. He says something, and two days later, it’s forgotten about. But yeah, I mean, he has been making more noise about this. I believe the day after he made those comments, the press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, said that he was referencing a voter ID law. He then doubled down on his claim that the federal government should sort of take over elections in a podcast interview. And then, you know, it’s gotten now to look at the legislative branch. Several people in Congress have commented on this. Senate Majority Leader John Thune said that he was not in favor of it. He was in favor of more regulation in terms of the SAVE Act, which would require proof of citizenship to register to vote.
Mike Johnson hinted that he might be in favor of more regulation. He also hinted that there could be fraud. I was watching an interview he did on C-SPAN, and he said that, you know, we had two candidates, and as more votes came in on Election Day, our lead—with every new batch of votes, our lead decreased. “Do I think there’s fraud? Yes. Can I prove it? No. But you know, we’ll look at that down the line.” And I—that just sort of amused me a little bit. But yeah, those were my initial thoughts: that it seemed like hot air; turns out it might not be. You want to add something, Drew?
Drew (03:29) Yeah, you guys saw what I said in the group chat. I still kind of do think it was just kind of like Trump yapping. But like at the beginning, that was my reaction, like, “This guy’s just saying stuff.”
Adam Watson (03:37) Mm-hmm. Right. Yeah, I mean, I think that’s always something you have to contend with with this president—is that whatever he says could just be some new thing he’s interested in. But I think with the sort of scale that it’s climbed to, I think it is worth talking about. So earlier in the episode, you referenced the Constitution. So specifically—and this might be a little boring, so I’ll try to keep it brief—Article I, Section 4, Clause 1, that is called the elections clause. It states that, “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 choosing Senators.” So basically, what that means is that elections for Congress—those are up to the states. Now, Congress can regulate it, but no mechanism within the Constitution allows it to just take it over to the degree that Trump is talking about. So that’s what he means by “goes against the Constitution.”
Drew (04:50) Yeah, and like, the Constitution, it’s kind of like the rulebook. So it’s not like you can just push through and be like, “Actually, I’m going to make this happen.” If the Constitution—you just said it just now—it would go against the Constitution.
Adam Watson (05:05) Yeah, it would also go against the interpretations of that clause that the Supreme Court has laid out. And I mean, the Constitution is pretty clear on this. There are some things within the Constitution where you can argue it’s vague, or you can argue that it doesn’t talk about this. But this is pretty clear. There is no language within the Constitution that says that the federal government can take over elections from states. And I think even the Supreme Court—though the majority of it may be either appointed by Trump or conservative—I do think that they would not rule in favor of Trump were this to make it to the Supreme Court.
Drew (05:44) So, where do we go from here then? Like if this is the end of it—like OK, open-and-shut case, this isn’t going to happen—why should we care about this?
Adam Watson (05:54) Well, I think it’s more so the implications of the president suggesting that the federal government should take over elections. Right? I mean, I don’t think we’ve ever—yeah, I don’t think we’ve ever had a president suggest that. And I mean, this would severely tip the scales of federalism in the federal government’s favor. And I think one of the things that is important within our country and within our democracy is that there is a healthy balance between powers that are within the prerogative of states and powers that are within the prerogative of the federal government.
Drew (06:29) What do you think, Nicholas?
Nicholas Perrin (06:31) Well, I mean, just the proposition of this being brought up by the president—you know, like the arguably the most powerful person in the world and the person with the most power in this country, especially nowadays—like, presidential power has been creeping up for the past, like, I don’t know, ever since World War II and even before then, like, with FDR especially.
Drew (06:37) Yeah, that’s what Adam was getting at, too. I agree.
Nicholas Perrin (06:56) I mean, the Supreme Court will strike this down if he tries anything without a constitutional amendment, which very, very, very, very, very likely will not get passed.
Adam Watson (07:04) No, it’s not going to happen within the timeframe that he would want it to.
Drew (07:16) Yeah, I liked how you said sketchy. I feel like this has ties to Trump being salty about the election and him not winning. Right?
Nicholas Perrin (07:26) I mean, yeah, like, didn’t he, like, send the FBI to investigate—like to look through voting records in Florida?
Drew (07:34) Probably. Wait, was it Florida? Was it like something in Georgia?
Nicholas Perrin (07:35) Yeah, because I’m pretty sure—
Adam Watson (07:36) So, yeah, it was Georgia. Trump—it’s, so the FBI went to Fulton County in Georgia. Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard went with those FBI agents to Georgia. There are also some reports that she arranged a call with President Trump between him and the FBI agents..
Nicholas Perrin (07:41) OK.
Adam Watson (08:01) For those who don’t know, Fulton County is like Atlanta, which is one of the areas Trump referenced. He said when he said that these areas cannot handle their elections or there’s fraud or some kind of that going on. Yeah, I mean, I agree. I think it does sort of go back to the mentality of, you know, not wanting to lose. I mean, by taking over elections—now, I’m not saying this would be the ultimate goal—but if you were to federalize elections, it would be much easier to either postpone them, to stop them, to do anything of that sort. Which, you know, would, I think, be a nail in the coffin of American democracy because the cornerstone of American democracy is the ability for the people to vote for representation: for their president, for their senator, for their House representative. And if that were taken away, I think that that would be just—I mean, just a nail in the coffin for American democracy.
Nicholas Perrin (08:59) So from what I’ve found—which I’m going to be completely honest, this is just from some one Reddit post in the r/AskTrumpSupporters Reddit—yeah, but I mean, and it should also be taken with extra salt because, you know, there are more—there’s obviously going to be more, like, hardline Trump supporters in here.
Adam Watson (09:09) OK, so a very reputable source.
Nicholas Perrin (09:22) And from what I’ve seen, I mean, most of them don’t agree with the hardline interpretation of, like, the federal government fully taking over voting and like everything like that. Mostly, they just take it to more likea regulation and/or proof of citizenship, which—
Adam Watson (09:34) Mm-hmm.
Nicholas Perrin (09:41) …isn’t a huge issue as has been proven. But yeah, so I don’t think we have to worry too much, even from his own base.
Adam Watson (09:50) Right, and I know it’s definitely not going to be popular with the states, and we’ve sort of seen that. The Missouri secretary of state—he came out and he said he would not be in favor of the federal government taking over elections, obviously. I mean, whether you’re a Democrat or a Republican in one of these states, the one thing that they can all pretty much agree on is that they do not want to give more power to the federal government at the expense of the state’s power. It’s traditionally something that holds. Yeah, I mean, I think even within the most extreme circles of Trump’s supporters—or at least within the majority of them—there is not going to be a base of support for the federal government taking over elections, especially because Republicans are usually not big fans of the federal government.
Nicholas Perrin (10:38) Yeah, I mean, I would push back against that a little because some Trump supporters do support the federal government, but only in, you know, a Trumpian way, which is—those people are kind of few and far between. But yeah, not all, like, MAGA people dislike the federal government in that way.
Adam Watson (11:02) Right. Yeah, I mean, the broad majority of Republicans tend to be against a strong federal government, but yeah. OK, so I guess the last thing we should talk about is, you know, how does this affect high schoolers? I’m going to be completely honest. I’m not sure it will. I mean, if it goes—if it follows through to its logical conclusion, which will be it not going anywhere—possibly we see a little bit more regulation on things like voting ID and stuff like that. But that’s a lot. If it follows that logical conclusion, then I doubt it will be of much consequence. If by some crazy happenstance, the federal government passes a constitutional amendment by November, and then the majority of states ratify it, and all of a sudden the federal government can take over elections, then I think it’ll have a lot of consequences, especially when we have elections. But I think the more, you know, the actual concern of this is just the president suggesting something like this is, I think, what it ultimately goes back to. What do you think, Drew?
Drew (12:11) Yeah, and we kind of talked about this in the episode “A Big Week for Elections.” We talked about potential actions by the Republican Party for the next election cycle. So I think we’re starting to see this. Like, he’s taking actions for—I don’t know if he thought he could get this done on time—but it shows his interest and, like, focus on making something happen for this next election.
Adam Watson (12:38) What do you think, Nicholas?
Nicholas Perrin (12:39) I guess this can also tie back into his attempt to convince state legislatures to gerrymander to save him—to save the Republican Party and the House. But that hasn’t gone anywhere.
Nicholas Perrin (13:09) Has California gone through with it? Or did they just get the approval?
Adam Watson (13:12) Yeah, California voted on it. It got challenged, got appealed to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court—two days ago or today or something like that—said that the California maps were constitutional, and that’s that. So they’re going to go through that midterm.
Nicholas Perrin (13:35) Yeah, I mean, I kind of figured that this would happen, but I’m just disappointed because, you know, gerrymandering is, like, kind of bad.
Adam Watson (13:35) Well, what?
Drew (13:46) Yeah, you could say that. You could say that.
Adam Watson (13:46) I think “kind of” is a weak word, I think, for the situation in which we find ourselves in terms of gerrymandering, but you know.
Nicholas Perrin (13:55) I mean, have you seen Illinois’ proposed maps?
Adam Watson (13:57) Oh yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I’ve seen Illinois’ proposed maps where it’s like a snake all leading up to Chicago.
Drew (14:03) Oh yeah, I’ve seen those. Like, “Let’s connect these two democratic things with the snake.” Snakes and ladders and yeah.
Adam Watson (14:06) Yeah.
Nicholas Perrin (14:09) Yeah, and all of them are blue.
Adam Watson (14:11) Yeah. But you know, as is the state of our country and democracy as of now. So it’s always fun to talk about that. Yeah. All right. Well, if no one has anything else to add, I think that’s going to do it for this episode. So, you know, make sure you follow the podcast wherever you’re listening—you know, Spotify—subscribe to us on YouTube, follow us on Instagram, do all that stuff. We would really appreciate it. And we’ll see you guys next time.
Drew (14:19) Cue outro music
Music Attribution: “The World Is Ours” by Zane Little, used with permission, courtesy of freemusicarchive.org.
