What legal experts say about the Trump administration’s attempts to make a federal case out of state elections

Naomi Schalit, The Conversation, The Conversation on Oct 27, 2026

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The Trump administration’s lawsuit against Alaska, which seeks to block certification of the U.S. Senate results there if the GOP candidate does not win, is the latest in a long series of actions throughout 2026 in which the administration has attempted to wrest control of federal elections from states.

In the Alaska case, the U.S. Department of Justice, directed by President Donald Trump, claims that it aims to “protect the integrity of the 2026 Senate election in Alaska.” If incumbent Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan does not win reelection, the DOJ asserts, it’s likely the result of voter confusion because another candidate with a very similar name – Daniel J. Sullivan, with no party affiliation – is on the ballot, too. So in the event that Sen. Sullivan fails to win reelection, the DOJ demands that Alaska not certify the election and instead should conduct an inquest into who voters thought they were voting for.

The campaign of the Democratic candidate, Mary Peltola, whose potential win in the hotly contested election could help shift the Senate to Democratic control, has called the lawsuit “wholly baseless” and “an unprecedented pre-emptive strike on democratic elections” in a court filing. Another filing states that the DOJ lawsuit “asks the Court to preemptively nullify Alaska’s U.S. Senate election and disenfranchise Alaska voters without any legal basis whatsoever. It seeks to go where law ends.”

There’s lots of other heated language in the case’s legal filings. But colorful language and legal citations are a much longer way of articulating a simple fact: The U.S. Constitution gives the president no authority over federal elections. That authority rests with the states and, to a limited degree, with Congress.

Over the past year, as the 2026 midterm elections approached, The Conversation has published a number of stories illustrating this fundamental constitutional rule. Here is a selection of them:

“States are empowered under Article 1, Section 4, of the Constitution to conduct elections and set the time, place and manner of those elections,” former federal judge John E. Jones told The Conversation in an interview on April 22, 2026. Jones was discussing Trump’s March 31 executive order to take control of mail-in voting from states and give it to the U.S. Postal Service and the Department of Homeland Security.

Jones, who is now the president of Dickinson College, explained why the framers of the Constitution set up a process in which states run elections and not the federal government:

“First of all, the federal government didn’t have the apparatus to conduct elections. And states had been running elections; they knew how to do it. There was a great deal of trust in the states’ ability to run elections. And there was the core debate of federalism, as to what powers states could retain, and they didn’t want to abdicate many of those powers,” Jones said.

There was also, Jones added, “a debate about the potential for fraud, that if there was a single entity controlling all the elections – that is, if you centralize elections under one politically motivated executive – it’s a really fraught situation which can be abused.”

“The Constitution is clear,” said Jones. “Unless amended, Article 1, Section 4 is – to use the trite phrase – what it is. The power rests with the states, absent congressional action. There is no mention of the president. None.”

The Republican-controlled House also tried this year to horn in on the constitutional power of states to regulate elections and who can vote.

In February 2026, the House, urged by Trump, passed the SAVE America Act. The act would have required those registering to vote in federal elections to – in person – “provide documentary proof of U.S. citizenship.” It also required some people who were voting in federal elections to give proof of U.S. citizenship.

John J. Martin, an election law scholar at Quinnipiac University Law School, wrote that the act “presents a constitutional dilemma. By requiring individuals to show documentary proof of U.S. citizenship to vote, the SAVE America Act is implicitly saying that someone must be a U.S. citizen to vote in federal elections.”

In other words, Martin wrote, “Congress would be instituting a qualification to vote, a power that the Constitution leaves exclusively to the states. Normally, when state and federal laws conflict, the Constitution’s supremacy clause mandates that federal law prevails. Yet, in this instance, where Congress has no actual authority to implement voter qualifications, the SAVE America Act would seem to have no constitutional leg on which to stand.”

The Senate proved unwilling to pass the SAVE Act this year, so this particular constitutional battle has yet to hit the courts.

Trump frequently targets mail voting, claiming it’s rife with fraud. The March 2026 executive order by the president aimed, it said, to ensure “integrity in federal elections” by placing severe restrictions on mail voting.

Among that order’s provisions was a directive to the U.S. Postal Service to implement, election scholar Martin wrote, “uniform ballot and envelope requirements for mail and absentee ballots used in federal elections.” The order also mandated that states must “provide the Postal Service, 60 days prior to Election Day, with lists of all voters eligible to vote by mail or absentee.”

A mail ballot that didn’t comply with the Postal Service’s requirements, or was sent by somebody not on a state-provided list, would not be delivered by the Postal Service, wrote Martin, “effectively canceling that vote.”

Lawsuits were filed by a host of state officials and voting rights groups. The suits eventually made their way up to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Martin summarized their arguments: “The president does not possess unilateral authority to alter the methods of voting in federal elections. Rather, the elections clause of the Constitution vests the authority to regulate the ‘time, place, and manner’ of federal elections in the states. Congress also has the authority to regulate federal elections, if it chooses to do so.”

On Sept. 14, 2026, the Supreme Court apparently agreed, with a 7-2 vote upholding a preliminary injunction blocking the new rules.