Sawt Falasteen - Trump attacks US electoral system with call to 'nationalize' voting

The latest idea from Trump -- who still refuses to acknowledge his 2020 election defeat by Democrat Joe Biden -- is to take responsibility for organizing elections away from some US states and hand it to the federal government instead.

"The Republicans should say, 'We want to take over. We should take over the voting in at least -- many, 15 places.' The Republicans ought to nationalize the voting," Trump told podcaster and former FBI deputy director Dan Bongino this week.

His extraordinary comments -- which were condemned by Democrats -- come as Republicans face losing control of Congress in the November 3 midterm elections. Polls show low approval ratings for second-term president Trump while Republicans have suffered a string of losses in local elections.

Trump has, however, doubled down on his long-standing but debunked claims of widespread voter fraud -- and his insistence that he needs to tackle it.

"I don't know why the federal government doesn't do them anyway," Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on Tuesday when asked about his comments about nationalizing elections.

Trump pressed the case in an interview with NBC News that aired Wednesday, alleging "there are some areas in our country that are extremely corrupt."

He added that if elections "can't be done properly and timely, then something else has to happen."

- 'No debate' -

Trump's comments have sparked fears that he will -- and not for the first time -- go up against the US Constitution itself.

"The Constitution clearly says that states are the ones that do the running" of elections, Justin Levitt, a professor at Loyola Law School, told AFP. "There is no debate about this."

Levitt, who worked in the administrations of presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden, said this was partly because of the huge size of the United States but also a "separation of powers" and an "anti-corruption measure."

But Trump, who has openly warned that he faces a third impeachment if Republicans lose in November, has been unrepentant in his quest to change the way America votes.

The 79-year-old remains convinced that the 2020 US presidential election was rigged against him, even though its legitimacy has been confirmed by the courts.

"It was a rigged election. Everybody now knows that," Trump told world leaders at the Davos forum in January. "People will soon be prosecuted for what they did."

Billionaire Trump, who has pushed presidential power to unprecedented limits since returning to office last year, is now using all the levers of power to right those perceived wrongs.

On January 28, the FBI seized hundreds of boxes of ballots and other materials in Georgia, as part of a controversial probe into his 2020 election loss in the southern state.

Unusually, the raid was carried out under the watchful eye of Tulsi Gabbard, Trump's director of National Intelligence, whose role is meant to be focused on foreign threats.

- 'Cast doubt' -

The US Justice Department has meanwhile filed lawsuits in some 20 states to try to recover voting records.

Trump's administration has falsely claimed that undocumented migrants are illegally voting on a large scale.

Such actions were "part of a broader strategy to, at least, cast doubt on the validity of the upcoming elections," Rick Hasen, a law professor at UCLA, told AFP.

"At worst, it suggests he may try to use the federal government to actually interfere in how states run elections in 2026," he said, also calling for civil society groups to be on the lookout.

One of them, the NAACP, which has fought for years for the civil rights of Black people, accused Trump's administration of "looking to exhaust our nation with these deplorable and unconstitutional antics in hopes that we will grow tired and concede."

In a more extreme scenario, some of the US president's critics fear he could use law enforcement or even the military to influence the upcoming election.

Some of Trump's top supporters have suggested as much.

"We're going to have ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) surround the polls come November," Steve Bannon, a first-term Trump aide and leading ideologue in his "Make America Great Again" movement, said on Tuesday.

"And you can whine and cry and throw your toys out of the pram all you want, but we will never again allow an election to be stolen."

A.Suleiman--SF-PST