A group of pro-Trump activists working in coordination with the White House is circulating a draft executive order that would declare a national emergency over elections and hand the president extraordinary, unprecedented power over how Americans vote.
The 17-page draft order, first reported by The Washington Post on Thursday, is based on the debunked conspiracy theory that China interfered in the 2020 presidential election.
If signed, it would give Trump the authority to unilaterally ban mail-in ballots and remove voting machines across the country ahead of the 2026 midterm elections — a move that voting rights experts, constitutional scholars, and state election officials are calling not just illegal, but a direct assault on democracy itself.
Why Declare National Emergency Over Elections?
Stop the steal! Stop the steal! Stop the steal!
The draft executive order uses claims of foreign election interference — specifically allegations about Chinese meddling in 2020 — as the basis for declaring a national emergency.
Under this emergency framework, the president would claim sweeping authority to dictate how elections are conducted across all 50 states.
Editor’s commentary: See why we said Trump MUST be held accountable after the insurrection and coup attempt using fake electors in 2020? Jack Smith found him to be guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. All of his work on the investigation, collecting evidence… for nothing. Trump showed us what he was willing to do to hold onto power, yet people voted him back into the White House. I’m stressed.
This includes the power to ban mail-in voting, a method used by tens of millions of Americans, and to remove electronic voting machines from polling places.
These are powers the president simply does not have under the Constitution, which explicitly gives state legislatures — not the executive branch — the authority to determine how elections are run.
Unfortunately, Trump doesn’t care about the Constitution.
A 2021 U.S. intelligence community assessment found no indication that any foreign government successfully interfered with the mechanics of the 2020 election.
The conspiracy theory at the heart of the draft order has been repeatedly debunked.
Who’s Behind It
One of the key figures pushing the draft order is Peter Ticktin, a Florida attorney and former classmate of Trump’s at the New York Military Academy.
Ticktin told The Washington Post that he has had “certain coordination” with the White House regarding the draft.
Ticktin acknowledged that under the Constitution, state legislatures control how elections are conducted, and the president has no role in that process. But he argued that alleged foreign interference creates conditions requiring emergency presidential action.
Ticktin is also the attorney for Tina Peters, the former Republican county clerk in Colorado who is currently serving a nine-year prison sentence for tampering with voting systems in a misguided attempt to prove election fraud conspiracies.
Another figure involved is Jerome Corsi, a conspiracy theorist who helped originate the racist “birtherism” claims against former President Barack Obama.
Corsi told reporters the draft order has been circulating since at least July 2025 and argued that if foreign interference could be proven, the president could act under his powers as commander in chief.
Prominent conservative attorney Cleta Mitchell — who played a central role in Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election — suggested as early as September 2025 that Trump was considering using emergency powers to take control of federal elections.
Legal Experts Say It’s Unconstitutional
The response from constitutional scholars and voting rights experts has been swift and unequivocal: the draft order has no legal basis.
The Elections Clause of the U.S. Constitution is clear. Article I gives states the sole authority to determine the “times, places, and manner” of holding elections. The president has no constitutional role in administering elections.
Constitutional law professor Justin Levitt, a former Department of Justice voting official, told Democracy Docket that the draft order is not just illegal — it’s unenforceable.
No local election official would have any obligation to follow it, he noted, because there is simply no legal authority behind it.
David Becker, the executive director of the Center for Election Innovation & Research and a former DOJ Civil Rights Division attorney, noted that such a clearly unconstitutional order would actually be a legal gift to its opponents, because it would allow courts to strike down the power grab well before any election takes place.
Election law scholar Ned Foley pointed out that it would take entirely new federal legislation to give the president any authority over the conduct of congressional elections — something an executive order cannot accomplish.
Michael McNulty, policy director for the pro-democracy group Issue One, emphasized that there is no credible evidence of Chinese government interference in the 2020 elections, and that past intelligence reports verified this.
The Bigger Picture
This draft order doesn’t exist in a vacuum. It’s the latest escalation in a sustained campaign by the Trump administration to federalize the election process ahead of November’s midterms.
Trump has already signed an executive order pressuring states to require proof of citizenship for voter registration and revoking federal funding from states that accept mail-in ballots.
Parts of that earlier order have already been blocked by judges in five separate cases.
Trump has publicly stated that if the SAVE America Act — which would require proof of citizenship for voter registration — fails in the Senate, he will act unilaterally.
He posted on Truth Social in mid-February that there “will be Voter I.D. for the Midterm Elections, whether approved by Congress or not.”
Meanwhile, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard has launched her own election investigation. FBI agents seized 2020 ballots from Fulton County, Georgia last month, and her office has inspected voting machines in Puerto Rico — actions that former DOJ officials have harshly criticized.
The timing is telling. Trump is facing historically low approval ratings, and projections for the November midterms look increasingly difficult for Republicans.
When asked by NBC whether he would trust the results of the midterm elections, Trump replied with a caveat that echoes his rhetoric from 2020: only “if the elections are honest.”
Why This Matters for Every American
Let’s be clear about what’s happening here. A sitting president’s allies are drafting legal documents that would allow him to seize control of the very elections that are supposed to hold him accountable.
The justification is a conspiracy theory. The mechanism is a manufactured emergency.
And the goal is to eliminate voting methods used by millions of Americans — disproportionately people of color, elderly voters, rural voters, and people with disabilities who rely on mail-in ballots.
This isn’t about election security. If it were, the administration would be working with state election officials to strengthen existing systems, not trying to override those officials entirely.
This is about control — control over who gets to vote, how they vote, and whether their votes count.
Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold summed it up plainly: regardless of whether this particular executive order ever gets signed, every American should be concerned by the continued use of lies and conspiracy theories to justify attempts to seize the reins of election administration and hold on to power.
That is not democracy. It is attempted authoritarianism.
The Constitution was designed with safeguards against exactly this kind of executive overreach.
The question now is whether those safeguards will hold — and whether enough Americans will demand that they do.
