President Trump has a new post on Truth Social today in which he says that states only put elections and have the ballots as agents acting in his leadership of President of the United States. The key lines are “states are simply an” agent “for the federal government to count and tabulate votes. They must do what the federal government, as represented by the President of the United States, tells them … “He claims that he will issue an executive decree to prohibit voting by mail and voting machines that he does not like.
In simple terms, it’s total bullshit.
The president has practically nothing to do with the administration of the elections. States organize US elections. Period. Congress, in certain parameters, can establish laws with standards that states must apply. But states always administer them. This is a fundamental, constitutional and structural characteristic of the American Republic. Trump’s claims are so far from everything that, even at a distance, legal or constitutional, I doubt that even the corrupt federal judicial power will have many trucks with it.
But Trump will certainly try. We already know it. It is therefore a reminder not only of the constitutional role established and clearly delimited from the States in the administration of the federal elections. It is a reminder of the critical role of Separate secreater of statesA sovereign authority which is distinct from the hierarchy of federal power even if its law is less than federal law.
While the courts now interpret the law, the president is an absolute monarch in the federal government. He can dismiss anyone at will. It can reserve laws under the cover of the application which is “aligned” on the administration “vision” and politics. No one anywhere in the government which is plausibly from the executive branch can participate in a competition or to have trouble with the president. If they do it, he simply draws them, sends them to the constitutional corn field Ersatz as the Boy Anthony in this famous episode of the dystopian twilight zone.
But the president cannot dismiss governors or mayors or secretaries of state or any other person in a government government. He can illegally retain funds. He can pay the federal police in the States. But the existence of these sovereign power beams is simply out of its reach. And it is the greatest power of the opposition, its strategic depth to counter and challenge the conceptions of a demagogue without law while the opposition forces are built.
