Trump’s latest foray into tyranny is to illegally change voting law | Opinion

President Donald Trump explained last week that he plans to “get rid of” mail-in ballots. He said he’ll start with an executive order ahead of the next election. “Remember, the states are merely an ‘agent’ for the Federal Government in counting and tabulating the votes,” he wrote. “They must do what the Federal Government, as represented by the President of the United States, tells them, FOR THE GOOD OF OUR COUNTRY, to do.” He beamed, remarkably, that Vladimir Putin had informed him, only days earlier: “You can’t have an honest election with mail-in ballots.” Think our politics have changed? Just a smidge?

Historians and lawyers gave the quant, old-fashioned reply — Trump’s scheme is unconstitutional. Article I, sec. 4 of the Constitution declares “The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations.” No role for the president. Alexander Hamilton explained in Federalist 59 that democracies must diversify the power to control elections to protect themselves from an overreaching authority. But then Hamilton never knew Trump.

And the Department of Homeland Security quickly announced that it may withhold millions of dollars designed for state election security and other law enforcement initiatives if locals don’t fall in line with Trump’s impermissible demand. We govern now by extortion, not Art. I. Just ask the universities, the law firms, the networks, the press, private corporations, foundations, researchers, Ukraine, our allies and trading partners. Why not the states? Tyranny embraces all. That’s the theory.

I’ll admit, though, I was even more taken aback by President Trump’s declaration that all must submit to what the “federal government, as represented by the President of the United States, tells them, FOR THE GOOD OF OUR COUNTRY.” What a mouthful. It was enough to bring back the 17th century. The glorious Sun King. Louis XIV who (perhaps) said: “L’Etat, c’est moi!” which translates to “I am the state!” The Potentate of Mar-a Lago. Finally. Chief Justice John Roberts must be wicked proud.

Besides, who could be more trustworthy overseeing elections than the guy who demanded, on tape, that Georgia’s Secretary of State “find” nearly 12,000 votes to put him over the top in the 2020 election? And who better to assure the integrity of the democratic constitutional system than the leader who summoned thousands of violent insurrectionists to the Capitol to overthrow the United States government? And after the thugs had brutalized over a hundred valiant police men and women on the seditionist’s behalf, who pardoned their crimes in the savage cause.

This is the standard bearer, the beau ideal, the literal, unquestioned, not to be questioned, never to be questioned, messiah of the American Republican Party. The guy who reports: “A lot of people are saying, ‘Maybe we like a dictator.’” The GOP is all in. Enthusiastically. To the hilt. Abraham Lincoln weeps. Joe McCarthy swoons.

One wonders what happens next.

Contributing columnist Gene Nichol is a professor of law at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill.