A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:
On this first primary day of the midterms, we also wanted to revisit a question that's come up a lot. Will this year's elections be free from federal interference? Allies of President Trump have floated using the president's emergency powers to make changes to the country's voting systems. They've also suggested sending federal agents to police the polls. NPR voting correspondent Miles Parks joins us now. Miles, please let me know what the idea of election emergency means. What does that mean?
MILES PARKS, BYLINE: Yeah, so this all goes back to this inherent idea that Trump has been talking about for years, even before he lost the 2020 election, that American elections are being manipulated in some way. And therefore, that is an emergency that requires major changes to how we all vote. One way to implement those changes - it's been gaining momentum on the far right - is this idea that the president can invoke emergency powers. The Washington Post reported last week about a draft emergency declaration being circulated by Trump allies.
NPR has also reviewed this document, and it honestly reads like a voting restriction wish list. It would ban, no excuse, vote by mail for most people. It would ban printing ballots in any language other than English, institute hand counts, among other things. All of this being tied to this unfounded idea that there's some sort of election emergency going on.
MARTÍNEZ: And just to be clear, has the president raised this possibility?
PARKS: You know, it's interesting. He was asked directly about it last week, about this draft. And he said he had never seen it. But just a couple of weeks ago, he posted on social media that he had found some sort of novel legal theory that would give him executive power to make some of the same changes that are mentioned in this order.
Also, I'll note that a far-right lawyer who's been circulating this draft, named Peter Ticktin, told our colleagues at Colorado Public Radio that he has been in touch with people at the White House. Ticktin represents Tina Peters, the former Colorado County clerk who's in prison right now for giving unauthorized access to her county's voting machines. And Ticktin says that there are existential stakes at play if elections are not, in his eyes, made secure. Here he is talking on the QNewsPatriot podcast in January.
(SOUNDBITE OF PODCAST, "QNEWSPATRIOT")
PETER TICKTIN: If President Trump can't call a national election emergency, then we will lose our country.
MARTÍNEZ: All right, so if Trump says there's some sort of emergency, would the law give them a lot more control?
PARKS: I talked to multiple legal experts about this, and everyone says the same thing. No. The Constitution is very clear that states run their own elections, with input from Congress. Here's how Rebecca Green put it. She leads the election law program at William & Mary.
REBECCA GREEN: I think the place to start is with the U.S. Constitution and the framework that the founders set up. In some areas, the president does have inherent authority to act unilaterally without congressional authorization, but not in the area of elections.
PARKS: So the courts would almost certainly block an effort like this, as they did for Trump's executive order last year also attempting to change aspects of how America votes. Another legal expert, Justin Levitt, also noted that because the federal government doesn't have jurisdiction over elections, states could literally just ignore an order like this.
MARTÍNEZ: Let me ask you this, though, because, OK, since the National Guard deployments started last summer, I mean, there's been the possibility or at least the thought of troops being deployed to polling places. What if the president did that?
PARKS: Well, that is definitely a worry among some state voting officials, even though Green and others have told me federal law is very clear on this. The military or federal law enforcement cannot interfere in voting. You still saw Steve Bannon, Trump's former adviser, call for ICE at polling places on his podcast. And then when the White House was asked specifically about that, press secretary Karoline Leavitt said recently that she couldn't guarantee ICE wouldn't be around a polling location in November.
But last week, notably, a senior Homeland Security official did make that guarantee. The official, Heather Honey, told a group of election officials flat out, there will be no ICE presence at polling locations. Any implication otherwise is disinformation, she said. But some election officials are wary of putting too much stock in a promise like that, since before she was at DHS, Honey herself was a major disinformation source about elections.
MARTÍNEZ: NPR's Miles Parks. Thanks a lot.
PARKS: Thanks, A.
(SOUNDBITE OF TIN HAT TRIO'S "BILL") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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