Who Controls Elections?
Donald Trump has repeatedly claimed that the president should have broad authority to change how elections are conducted—particularly when it comes to abolishing mail-in voting and voting machines. As recently as August 2025, Trump pledged to issue an executive order banning mail-in ballots and voting machines ahead of the 2026 midterm elections, insisting that states must comply with his directive because, in his words, “States act merely as ‘agents’ for the Federal Government when it comes to counting and tabulating votes.… They are required to follow what the Federal Government, represented by the President of the United States, instructs them to do, FOR THE GOOD OF OUR COUNTRY”.
But this isn’t the first time he has suggested that he could control the election process. In March 2025, Trump issued a major executive order titled “Preserving and Protecting the Integrity of American Elections” that aims to expand presidential control over the election process. The order attempts to direct the Election Assistance Commission (EAC) — an independent, bipartisan agency — to mandate that voters show a passport or other similar document proving citizenship when registering to vote using the federal voter registration form. The executive order has been the subject of extensive litigation, and several federal judges have issued injunctions against various portions of it.
Amid the COVID-19 pandemic during his first term, President Trump publicly suggested delaying the election. Constitutional scholars and members of Congress quickly pointed out he lacked such authority—the date of federal elections is set by statute, and only Congress could change it.
The U.S. Constitution provides a clear framework for who holds the authority to control elections, and it is not the president.
Article I, Section 4: Congressional and State Authority
The main constitutional authority over U.S. elections is found in Article I, Section 4, commonly called the “Elections Clause.” It states:
“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…”
This language charges state legislatures with defining the details of congressional elections, including logistics and procedures. Importantly, Congress retains the power to override state laws and impose federal rules—such as standardized Election Days or regulations for voter registration and districting.
What does this mean for the president? The Constitution is clear: the president has no direct authority to determine the conduct of congressional elections or to unilaterally change the way federal elections are held. Presidential influence over elections is limited to signing or vetoing congressional legislation, not acting alone.
Article II and the 12th Amendment: Presidential Elections
Presidential elections are regulated by Article II, which created the Electoral College, and by the 12th Amendment .
Article II, Section 1 provides:
“Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors…”
States arrange how their presidential electors are selected, subject to changes imposed by congressional law. The federal government, through Congress (not the president!), determines the timing of choosing electors and casting electoral votes. The 12th Amendment sets procedures for how electors meet and vote for both president and vice president.
Again, neither Article II nor the 12th Amendment gives the president authority to independently set election rules. At most, the president can recommend reforms, sign laws crafted by Congress, and advocate for certain policies.
Historical Examples of Limits on Presidential Power Over Elections
Even during national crises, presidents have not been able to unilaterally change election rules:
- 1864 Election (Lincoln): Despite the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln did not postpone or suspend the presidential election. Elections were carried out in the states, including special arrangements for soldiers to vote.
- 1944 Election (Roosevelt): In the midst of World War II, Franklin Roosevelt stood for re-election. Again, no effort was made by the president to change election laws.
Presidential Powers: What Can the Executive Branch Do?
The president’s responsibilities in elections are more limited than you might expect and are essentially ministerial and ceremonial, not regulatory.
The executive power in Article II invests the president with broad national leadership, command of the military, and responsibility to “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed”. This can include enforcing voting rights laws and overseeing federal agencies that support election integrity. However, the Constitution and decades of legal precedent restrict the president from directly controlling election rules.
- The president cannot by executive order change state rules for voting methods (e.g., mail-in voting, voting machines).
- The president cannot unilaterally suspend or postpone federal elections.
- The president cannot direct states to alter their voter registration, polling locations, or other administrative details.
- The president has no role in certifying state results. That function belongs to state officials, with Congress responsible for counting electoral votes.
- The president can direct federal agencies like the Department of Justice to enforce federal election laws, protect voting rights, and intervene in cases of fraud or intimidation. The president does not have the authority to direct federal agencies to act in a manner contrary to the law.
When presidents have sought to influence election administration more directly, courts and Congress have reaffirmed the constitutional boundaries. For example, efforts to change the date of an election or prohibit certain voting methods without congressional action have consistently failed in the courts.
Congressional Power: The Real Check on Election Rules
While state legislatures remain the primary manager of elections, Congress retains the final word. The Supreme Court has confirmed that congressional law “preempts” conflicting state rules in matters of federal elections. When Congress acts—through laws like the Voting Rights Act, Help America Vote Act, and the National Voter Registration Act—states must comply, and the president’s role is simply to sign or veto those laws.
Congress has used its power over the years to:
- Set a uniform national Election Day.
- Establish protections for disabled voters and overseas citizens.
- Mandate requirements around voter registration and accessibility.
- Regulate campaign finance and transparency.
Checks, Balances, and Modern Tensions
Recent political debates have seen calls for presidents to take stronger action on election oversight, especially regarding the use of mail-in ballots or voting machines. However, these calls run up against clear constitutional limits: the president cannot rewrite the rules of elections without Congress or state legislatures.
Any presidential attempt to do so by executive order would face swift legal challenges and almost certainly be invalidated. The intent of the Framers was to divide election power between the states and Congress, with the president largely excluded from direct rule-making authority. This balance—central to federalism—protects elections from potential abuses of executive power and ensures that reforms require broad democratic consensus. While presidents can champion reforms and enforce federal laws supporting fair elections, they are constitutionally forbidden from unilaterally changing election rules.
Conclusion
The framework isn’t perfect—it can create confusion when state and federal authorities clash. But the basic principle remains: states run elections. Congress can regulate them within constitutional bounds, and presidents enforce the resulting laws.
For citizens, lawmakers, and presidents alike, respect for these boundaries secures the foundation of American democracy. The right to vote—and the integrity of how that vote is counted—is protected not by any single leader, but by enduring constitutional principles and the shared power of states and Congress.
The Electoral College: Should America Go Popular?
By John Turley
On September 1, 2025
In Commentary, History, Politics
Few topics in American politics generate as much perennial debate as the Electoral College. Every four years, calls to abolish it resurface—often with renewed vigor when the electoral vote winner loses the popular vote, as happened in 1824, 1876, 1888, 2000, and 2016. The proposal is to elect the president by a nationwide popular vote, just as we do governors and senators.
Why We Have an Electoral College
The Electoral College was a late-stage compromise at the Constitutional Convention of 1787. The framers were balancing multiple tensions:
Delegates feared that direct election by popular vote would favor populous states, allow urban centers to dominate rural areas, and encourage demagogues to campaign purely on popular passions. At the same time, they worried about giving Congress too much control over the executive branch.
The system for selecting the president—via the Electoral College—was partly designed to prevent direct popular influence. Its original intent, according to historians, was to empower electors (seen as more knowledgeable) and to ensure thoughtful deliberation in choosing the president, guarding against the masses being swayed by charm rather than substance.
Some delegates—like James Madison, James Wilson, and Gouverneur Morris—supported direct popular election of the president, while others, like Elbridge Gerry and Roger Sherman, explicitly voiced distrust in direct election of the president and believed ordinary voters lacked impartiality or sufficient knowledge.
Institutional and political bargaining ultimately shaped the final structure. Their solution: each state gets electors equal to its total number of representatives and senators. The addition of two electors for the senators ensures that the small states remain, on a population basis, overrepresented in the Electoral College.
State legislatures determine how electors are chosen (eventually, every state moved to popular election). Most states now award all their electoral votes to the statewide popular vote winner—“winner-take-all.”
The Electoral College thus emerged not as anyone’s ideal system, but as a possible, workable compromise that balanced competing regional interests, philosophical concerns about democracy, and the practical realities of governing a large, diverse republic in the 18th century.
Pros of Eliminating the Electoral College
Equal Weight for Every Vote
The most compelling argument for eliminating the Electoral College centers on democratic equality. Under the current electoral system, a vote in Wyoming carries roughly three times the weight of a vote in California when measured by electoral votes per capita. To put this in real numbers Wyoming has about 193,000 people per electoral vote while California has about 718,000. This mathematical reality means that some Americans’ voices count more than others in selecting their president, a principle that seems to contradict the foundational democratic ideal of “one person, one vote.”
A national popular vote would ensure that every American’s vote carries identical weight, regardless of geography. This approach would eliminate scenarios where candidates win the presidency while losing the popular vote. Such outcomes can undermine public confidence in democratic institutions and raise questions about the legitimacy of electoral results.
Reflects the Will of the Majority
In two of the last six elections (2000 and 2016), the candidate with fewer total popular votes became president. While the framers accepted the possibility of divergence between the popular and electoral results, many modern Americans view such outcomes as undermining democratic legitimacy.
Encourages Nationwide Campaigning
Because many states are firmly “red” or “blue,” campaigns focus their energy on a handful of battleground states that could go either way—like Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Arizona. Under a popular vote, candidates would have an incentive to compete everywhere, because every additional vote counts the same regardless of location.
Simplifies the Process
The Electoral College system confuses many Americans and can seem archaic in the 21st century. A direct popular vote is straightforward and immediately understandable: the candidate who receives the most votes wins. This simplicity could increase public trust and participation in the democratic process.
Eliminates “Faithless Electors”
Although rare, faithless electors—those who cast electoral votes against their state’s popular choice—are possible under the current system. A direct election would remove this constitutional quirk.
Cons of Eliminating the Electoral College
Federalism Concerns
The United States is a union of states as well as a single nation. The Electoral College reinforces the role of states in presidential elections, reflecting their status as sovereign entities in certain respects. Abolishing it could be seen as eroding federalism by further centralizing power.
Risk of Regional Dominance
Opponents argue that without the Electoral College, candidates could focus disproportionately on high-population regions—California, Texas, Florida, New York—while ignoring rural states and smaller communities. Whether this would happen in practice is debated, but the perception of neglect could deepen regional divides.
Potential for Narrow-Margin Crises
In a popular vote system, a razor-thin margin would require a nationwide recount. Under the Electoral College, disputes are typically contained within a state (e.g., Florida in 2000). A national recount would be a logistical and political nightmare.
Constitutional Hurdles
Abolishing the Electoral College requires a constitutional amendment—an extraordinarily high bar. That means approval by two-thirds of both houses of Congress and ratification by three-quarters of the states. Smaller states, which benefit from the Electoral College’s vote weighting, have little incentive to approve such a change.
Intermediate Options
Since abolishing the Electoral College outright is politically unlikely in the near term, reform advocates have proposed middle-ground solutions.
The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact (NPVIC)
The NPVIC is an agreement among states to award all their electoral votes to the national popular vote winner, but it only takes effect once states totaling at least 270 electoral votes join. As of 2025, 17 states plus D.C. (totaling 209 electoral votes) have joined. This approach sidesteps a constitutional amendment but relies on states’ willingness to cede control over their electoral votes. The compact could be implemented without amending the constitution and achieves the functional equivalent of a popular vote. However, it has not been legally tested and would likely face court challenges. To me, the greatest drawback is that states could withdraw at any time. I would envision that in a closely contested and contentious election states unhappy with the national outcome would likely withdraw from the compact.
Proportional Allocation of Electoral Votes
Instead of winner-take-all, states could allocate electoral votes proportionally to the share of the statewide vote. Maine and Nebraska already use a variation of this system, awarding some votes by congressional district. Theoretically, this would reduce the impact of battleground states and increase the representation for minority views within states. But it could also increase the likelihood of no candidate reaching 270 electoral votes thereby sending the election into the House of Representatives. It still preserves the over representation of smaller states because it retains the two electors for senators.
If electors are awarded proportionally based on statewide voting, the popular vote may not be distributed in a manner to allow awarding of whole delegates. There’s no constitutional provision for awarding partial electors. This would be especially significant in states with only one or two representatives in the house.
If electors were awarded to the winners of each Congressional District this would encourage even more gerrymandering than we are currently seeing. Extreme gerrymandering could undermine any progress towards reflecting the popular vote, simply continuing the current mismatch of popular and electoral votes.
Gerrymandering is a political practice that involves manipulating the boundaries of electoral districts to benefit a particular party or group. It is nothing new in American politics, originating in the early 19th century. The term “gerrymandering” was coined after an 1812 incident in Massachusetts, where Governor Elbridge Gerry signed a bill redrawing district lines to favor his party. One of the districts resembled a mythical salamander in shape, inspiring the portmanteau “Gerry-mander” in a satirical cartoon by Elkanah Tisdale that helped popularize the term. It’s interesting, that since gerrymandering favored the Democratic-Republican Party and the newspaper that published the cartoon supported the Federalist Party, it was made to look not like a cute salamander but more like an ominous dragon.
Bonus Electoral Votes for National Popular Vote Winner
A hybrid idea would keep the Electoral College but award a fixed number of bonus electors (say, 100) to the national popular vote winner. This would almost guarantee alignment between the popular and electoral results without abandoning the current structure. This option maintains a state-based system and reduces the chance of a split result. But it would also require a constitutional amendment and add complexity that many voters may find confusing.
Feasibility of Change
Reforming or abolishing the Electoral College faces three main obstacles:
Conclusion
The Electoral College is both a relic of 18th-century compromises and a living feature of America’s federal structure. Its defenders argue that it protects smaller states, contains electoral disputes, and reinforces the states’ role in national governance. Its critics counter that it violates the principle of “one person, one vote” and distorts campaign priorities.
Abolishing it in favor of a direct popular vote would likely make presidential elections more democratic in the literal sense, but it would also raise questions about federalism, campaign strategy, and the handling of close results. The Electoral College preserves federalism and geographic balance but can produce outcomes that seem to contradict majority will.
Intermediate options like the NPVIC or proportional allocation may offer ways to mitigate the College’s most controversial effects without uprooting the constitutional framework but also face significant hurdles for implementation.
Whether reform happens will depend not just on the merits of the arguments, but on the political incentives of the states and the parties. Until those incentives shift, the Electoral College is likely to remain—imperfect, contentious, and uniquely American.