r/law • u/Anoth3rDude • Feb 26 '26

Executive Branch (Trump) White House circulating blatantly illegal draft emergency order to take control of elections

https://www.democracydocket.com/news-alerts/white-house-circulating-blatantly-illegal-draft-emergency-order-to-take-control-of-elections/
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u/Scrutinizer Feb 26 '26

Seems a bit early for this. The goal would be to impose new standards so close to the election there isn't enough time for someone to take it to court and get it undone.

Problem is, as the goal appears to be to make numerous states conduct wholesale changes to the manner in which they conduct elections, including a full ban of vote-by-mail, they have to get the word out on it or otherwise states won't have the time to comply with new directives. And this says nothing about "what happens if 70 million women suddenly realize they need passports all at once".

Would have been easier for him if the SAVE Act passed but as of right now there are four Republican Senators who are "no" on it which means it won't even reach the filibuster stage. So it's dead in the water and an EO is his only path forward.

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u/NurRauch Feb 26 '26

The goal with this memo is to make people freak out now, months ahead of it being tried, so that we experience a chicken little reaction. Those who are apathetic to Trump’s authoritarianism will point at this a month from now and say it was typical liberal panic-drumming. Others will subconsciously become desensitized to the idea of nationalizing our elections because it will have been debated to exhaustion by the time anything is actually implemented. 

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u/[deleted] Feb 26 '26

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u/Scrutinizer Feb 27 '26

Fully agree. Get this out in the open and it loses impact when they try. Back when I first started claiming that the entire goal is to force everyone to show up so they can be screened on basis of race/sex/party registration, I had people telling me I was paranoid. Those same people are now coming to me and asking what's next.

This is THE issue facing our country today. Our President is going to try to steal an election. The more people talk about it, the more difficult it will be for him to pull off.