No president should run elections

They already have too much power.

Excuse us, Mr. President. Hate to correct you in front of the cameras here in the Oval Office. You just said “states are agents of the federal government.”

No, Mr. President, they are not. 

In these United States, states have sovereignty over their spheres of influence. The Tenth Amendment makes that explicit: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.”

The United States is not France. France has 101 departements. They are not sovereign; they are administrative units of a unitary state — akin to your regional EPA offices. French departements have, for example, no military under the command of a governor; they cannot levy their own taxes or pass their own statutes.

On a podcast run by Dan Bongino (can’t we be rid of this nut?), you said:

“We want to take over, we should take over the voting in at least many — 15 places. The Republicans ought to nationalize the voting.”

No, they must not. Frankly, Mr. President, speaking for those of us who owe allegiance to the Constitution, we are troubled by your Caesarism. (Sir, call us whatever name you wish; we RINOs have sharp horns!)

States are a check & balance

The Elections Clause, Article I, Section 4 of the Constitution empowers states to determine the “Times, Places and Manner” of holding federal elections. True, Congress has the power to “make or alter” such rules, but it has done so sparingly in the 237 years since ratification, mainly through constitutional amendment.

The SAVE Act pending in Congress would seem to meet this threshold; the legislation requires proof of citizenship. Fair enough. Other proposed “reforms” are off-ramps to nationalized elections. We may question the practice in mostly blue states of prospectively mailing out ballots, unbidden. As long as the returned ballot matches an actual voter. We also prefer paper ballots. Restricting vote harvesting to relatives? Hard to enforce. Not a fan of ranked choice voting (too confusing). Nonetheless, we oppose this federal mission creep because we are conservatives. Conservatives resist the accretion of power by Washington — especially by the unitary executive.

Ronald Reagan said at his first inauguration, “the federal government did not create the states, the states created the federal government.”

Before you eject us bodily out of the White House without supper, like you did to Volodymyr Zelensky, we should add that too many Americans don’t trust you running elections, full stop. When you tried to overturn the 2020 election, people got hurt. If Congress votes for these regs, who would enforce them? Donald J. Trump!

“I’m not in favor of federalizing elections.” — Senate Republican Leader John Thune 

Tulsi will find what she wants

You have seized ballots in Georgia in a desperate attempt to prove your “stolen election” lies. We have no doubt Tulsi Gabbard will duly generate the expected obscurant smoke, with the assistance of many mirrors.

Yes, something called the tabulator tapes for 315,000 early, in-person ballots went unsigned, a lapse in Georgia election procedures, not statutes. The tapes are one of at least five redundant checkpoints including encrypted memory cards, centralized tabulation, audits, and recounts. Georgia conducted statewide hand and machine recounts, all of which confirmed your defeat. (Mr. President, your blood pressure!) 

It is troubling that you are willing to disenfranchise 315,000 voters — a majority of whom could well have been Trump voters — over a bureaucratic mistake.

Blaska’s Bottom Line: If you want to make it easier to jigger elections, consolidate 50 election systems into one. Makes Vladimir’s and Xi’s efforts to hack our elections that much simpler.

Is Senate Leader Thune a RINO?