Despite having been elected president twice himself, Donald Trump continues to try to undermine confidence in the integrity of American elections. The objective is apparently to render them meaningless, as in the Russia of his avatar, Vladimir Putin. Hail to the thief.
Fortunately, election officials in Vermont and New Hampshire and some others across the country are ready to defend the essential fairness of voting procedures and their prerogatives to administer them.
Last month, New Hampshire Secretary of State David Scanlan rejected a request by the U.S. Justice Department to provide a complete copy of the state’s voter registration list, including detailed information about voters and procedures. New Hampshire was one of at least nine states to receive such a request.
Scanlan cited a state law stipulating that the statewide voter database and the information included therein “shall be private and confidential” and not subject to requests for disclosure. Municipalities are required to maintain basic updated lists of active voters, which are available to the public. That access should suffice for any legitimate purpose.
Sarah Copeland Hanzas, Vermont’s secretary of state, preemptively announced last week that should the Trump administration demand it, she would not supply any personally identifiable voter information — which, according to the Stateline news service, could include dates of birth, driver’s license information, Social Security numbers and the like. VtDigger reports that she referred to a Vermont law that strictly prohibits both state and municipal governments from sharing with the feds voters’ personal information that could be compared with information contained in other federal databases. A basic list of voters’ names and addresses can be accessed by any member of the public, she said.
These state statutes are in line with Article 1, section 4 of the U.S. Constitution, which assigns to the states the power to determine the “times, places and manner” of holding elections. Congress may override state procedures and enact election laws such as the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which enfranchised minority groups.
The key here is that the authority of the president over elections is strictly limited. In blocking an executive order issued by Trump requiring voters to provide documentary proof of citizenship to cast ballots, a federal judge wrote last month, “The Constitution does not grant the president any specific powers over elections.”
End of story? Of course not, not in this presidency. Trump this week broached the idea of issuing an executive order abolishing mail-in voting and the use of voting machines. During their summit meeting in Alaska earlier this month, Putin told Trump what he wanted to hear — as do all those who so easily manipulate him — that the 2020 election was rigged in favor of Joe Biden through mail-in voting. (Let’s stipulate here that Putin knows a thing or two about rigging elections as well as about interfering with elections in other countries.)
Some 40 million Americans cast their ballots by mail in the 2024 election, a practice that remains popular among older and rural voters and which is allowed in such Republican strongholds as Florida, Ohio and Utah. Notably, Republicans made large gains in voting by mail last year over 2020, although still lagging behind Democrats in many states. And U.S. military personnel deployed overseas vote by mail.
Moreover, many, many studies have concluded that voter fraud is vanishingly rare whether ballots are cast by mail or via voting machines, as they are in the vast majority of jurisdictions. No credible evidence has emerged that voting machines have been hacked. In fact, Newsmax, the conservative cable news channel, recently agreed to pay Dominion Voting Systems $67 million to settle a defamation suit brought by the voting machine company over repeated false claims that the 2020 election was rigged. Fox News in 2023 agreed to pay Dominion $787 million to settle similar claims.
Scanlan told WMUR.com that New Hampshire takes election security seriously and has multiple checks in place to ensure its integrity. “There have to be referees in that process to make sure that process is fair and … accurate and that in the end, the outcome is what it is,” he said.
That doctrine, however, is not in the playbook being followed by the Trump administration. Its objective is to further erode confidence in elections with an eye to remaining in power indefinitely.
The stakes are high even in the short term. Should Democrats take back the House or Senate in next year’s mid-term elections, they will have the power to investigate the many corrupt and illegal actions Trump has launched since returning to power. Defending free and fair elections is among the most important ways to resist the establishment of a permanent one-party authoritarian government.