A GOP request pushes the limits on federal interference in elections

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and poll administration across the U S This news analysis was originally distributed in Votebeat s free weekly newsletter Sign up to get future editions including the latest reporting from Votebeat bureaus and curated news from other publications delivered to your inbox every Saturday Earlier this month a group of Republican state lawmakers in Michigan sent a letter asking the U S Justice Department to deploy official ballot monitors and provide comprehensive oversight for Michigan s primary and general elections Besides voting process monitors which the Justice Department for years has deployed around the country to observe elections the letter isn t clear on what the Republican lawmakers mean by comprehensive oversight or exactly what legal authority they believe would allow such an intervention In interviews with Votebeat Michigan reporter Hayley Harding two of the letter s signatories did not go into specifics about what they were envisioning you can read our full review on the letter here President Donald Trump and his allies have repeatedly pushed for more federal oversight of elections In March he issued a sweeping executive order that would overhaul the way elections are administered in a great number of states though federal courts have since blocked multiple of its provisions on the grounds that the Constitution doesn t grant him such authority His administration is appealing at least several of those decisions In August Trump asserted in a social media post that the States are merely an agent for the Federal Governing body in counting and tabulating the votes and must do what the Federal Regime as represented by the President of the United States tells them FOR THE GOOD OF OUR COUNTRY to do White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt earlier this month noted the administration is working on a second executive order on elections Particular conservative allies have suggested Trump could assert urgency powers a large number of experts have commented he cannot Historical precedents for such federal oversight or authority aren t easy to come by Alexander Keyssar a professor of history and social program at the Harvard Kennedy School and the author of The Right to Vote The Contested History of Democracy in the United States could only think of a sparse times such as during Reconstruction or after the passage of the Voting Rights Act when the federal regime asserted authority to step in and administer an balloting Keyssar who notes that Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson was once his pupil described Votebeat there was almost no federal involvement in elections before the Civil War and the Reconstruction Amendments to the Constitution They included the th Amendment which noted the right of citizens to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race color or previous condition of servitude Related Morale has never been lower Republicans fear rough midterms Congress passed the Enforcement Acts to protect those rights though Keyssar in his book describes their passage as Congress stretching the limits of its constitutional powers For a limited years Keyssar notes the federal governing body was actively intervening to protect the rights of Black voters in the former Confederate states against entities such as the Ku Klux Klan Federal enthusiasm for such enforcement dwindled after that Big swaths of the Enforcement Acts were either modified or repealed over the years and the federal ruling body didn t do much more about elections until the Civil Rights Movement Keyssar declared In Congress passed the Voting Rights Act the subtitle of which Keyssar points out is an act to enforce the fifteenth amendment However certain parts of the Enforcement Acts are still on the books Joseph Nunn a counsel for the Brennan Center s Liberty and National Safeguard Venture who focuses on issues surrounding the domestic sessions of the U S military explained that includes a provision of what is currently known as the Insurrection Act The provision designed for civil rights enforcement allows the president in certain circumstances to federalize the National Guard and deploy it or the active-duty armed forces in a state where a group of people are being deprived of a constitutional right that state administration are either unable or unwilling to protect he commented The provision was used by President Ulysses S Grant during Reconstruction Nunn explained and a handful of times during the Civil Rights Movement including the Little Rock Arkansas school integration problem but not since that period Nunn announced he believes the Insurrection Act grants dangerously broad powers but wouldn t allow a president to take over an polling The question would be what legal authority does the president have to unilaterally go in and seize control over an balloting he commented adding That s not something the president can do Carrie Levine is Votebeat s editor-in-chief and is based in Washington D C Contact Carrie at clevine votebeat org Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization covering local balloting integrity and voting access Sign up for their newsletters here Read more about this topic After Voting Day losses Trump and MAGA will strike back hard Trump administration proposal for online voter registration form raises concerns Rigged and stolen Trump calls for ban on mail-in early voting ahead of midterms The post A GOP request pushes the limits on federal interference in elections appeared first on Salon com