With the 2026 midterm elections just about 10 months away, the battle lines have been drawn in the election integrity war. It’s one of the most important issues of the day. Perhaps the most important. In the US Senate, the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act (SAVE Act), now rebranded as the SAVE America Act, is being worked on. Meanwhile, House Republicans have introduced the Make Elections Great Again Act, aimed at tightening election security through various measures. The backdrop to all of this is the dispute over who should set the rules for federal elections, the states or Washington, DC.
President Donald Trump has called upon congressional Republicans to “nationalize” federal elections. He continues to claim – as do many of his supporters – that the official results of the 2020 election were illegitimate. Elected Democrats and their allies in the establishment media always make a point of saying such claims are made “without evidence,” which is at least somewhat debatable.
Election Integrity Reform in the Spotlight
The issue, in terms of election integrity, is that certain states have in the past changed the rules arbitrarily. One of the reasons there remains so much suspicion around the 2020 election, for example, is that a few states changed their voting guidelines just before the election.
The Make Elections Great Again Act would enforce certain reforms to the electoral process, streamlining it across all the states. To be counted, mail-in ballots must be received by the end of Election Day. There is an exception for overseas service members. Currently, the states have different rules about deadlines for receiving mail-in ballots. Some allow ballots that were received several days after Election Day to be counted.
This legislation also demands stricter maintenance of voter rolls and prohibits ballot harvesting, where individuals collect quantities of completed ballots and deliver them to polling centers. Also, ranked choice voting for federal elections would be prohibited, and the use of auditable paper ballots would be required.
President Trump’s position, apparently, is that the current chaotic and decidedly haphazard federal elections can only be restored to order, fairness, and transparency if the federal government imposes certain standards upon all 50 states.
Article I Section 4 of the Constitution deals with congressional elections and asserts:
“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.”
The States or Congress?
What would constitutional scholars say about how much autonomy is really granted to states, regarding the control of elections? Does “The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections” mean states get to decide how much time voters have to cast their ballots, what kinds of ballots they can use, who can vote and who cannot? It seems unlikely that the Founders intended states to have carte blanche. They did leave the ultimate power with Congress, after all.
This means that Trump may be pushing it by attempting to regulate elections through executive orders, but, by encouraging Republicans in Congress to bring states into line, he isn’t out of line.
Democrat officeholders seem almost universally opposed to any measures that would make elections at all levels of government more secure and standardized. Yet none of the reforms Republicans, and conservatives in general, want to bring to the electoral process would unfairly tip the scales in their favor.
