A draft emergency executive order to declare a national emergency to allow President Donald Trump to take unprecedented control over voting is being circulated by anti-voting activists who said they are in coordination with the White House.

Voting rights experts, democracy advocates, and at least one state election chief said Trump doesn’t have the authority to claim such powers — and any attempt would be blatantly unconstitutional.

The draft order — which is said to be based on a conspiracy theory that China interfered with the 2020 election — would allow Trump to unilaterally ban mail-in ballots and voting machines on the basis that they are susceptible to foreign interference.

The order comes from MAGA activists who have been coordinating with the White House. One of the advocates for the order is Peter Ticktin, the attorney for Tina Peters, the former GOP Colorado county clerk who is currently serving a nine-year state prison sentence for her role in a 2021 voting system breach, in an attempt to find voter fraud based on election conspiracies.

The Elections Clause of the U.S. Constitution explicitly gives states — not the president — sole authority over elections.

  • orioler25@lemmy.world
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    5 hours ago

    Is this meant to be in character, or did you seriously only realize the USA was authoritarian when it started being mean to white people?

    • HCSOThrowaway@lemmy.world
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      3 hours ago

      Authoritarianism is a spectrum. We are more authoritarian than ever.

      That doesn’t mean we weren’t authoritarian before.

      I have a feeling you knew all that and just wanted to fight CptOblivius, though.

    • CptOblivius@lemmy.world
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      4 hours ago

      It wasn’t necessary athoritarian previously. It was really following the will of the people of the time. Essentially white dudes voting in white dudes to protect their shitty interests. That is not where the majority of the population is now. Society has shifted beyond where the government is, that is why they are trying to control the voting process.

      • orioler25@lemmy.world
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        4 hours ago

        What about that time it used genocide against dozens of indigenous nations to expand, or became a police-slave-state that codified naturalized racism, or restricted voting access along race and gender until forced otherwise, or adopted an organised military to suppress unions, or spent decades intervening and invading countries that elected governments who said mean things about the US, or when it suppressed climate change knowledge for decades, or when it constructed a mass - surveillance apparatus over a century, or when it imprisoned the largest number of people anyone has on the planet to perpetuate forced labour based on that one time it was a police-slave-state? I didn’t even mention the Patriot Act or how they use nukes.

        Again, are you meant to be the actual Cpt. Oblivious, or is it meant to be a dig on me like the joke is unclear. Above is more for the benefit of any chuds who may feel validated by your previous comment.

        • CptOblivius@lemmy.world
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          3 hours ago

          It wasn’t a dig. All those things you mentioned were not straight up authoritarianism, they were in part by the largest group voting group getting their way. That’s what the voters want. It was extremely shitty stuff and I never said it wasn’t. Just because these happened doesn’t mean it was because of authoritarianism. We slowly evolved getting better over time, but now we are regressing. And it will be extremely difficult to vote our way out of it, even when the majority of eligible voters want to. In no time in our Constitutional history has so much power been under one man.