Republicans Talk Around Trump’s Call to ‘Nationalize’ Elections. Democrats Are Taking It Seriously.

President Donald Trump’s comments on former Deputy FBI Director Dan Bongino’s podcast Monday that he would like to see Republicans “nationalize” elections has Republicans on Capitol Hill playing something of a guessing game.

What exactly did Trump mean when he suggested that Republicans should “take over the voting … in at least many, 15 places”?

“If he was on Dan’s show, and he’s catering to Dan’s audience, I’m sure there’s not going to be many Democrats listening to the show,” Rep. Jimmy Patronis, a Republican from Florida, mused about Trump’s comments on Bongino’s first podcast episode since leaving the administration.

“I believe that it’s appropriate for somebody to have an ID in order to prove their own identity when they’re voting,” Patronis said. “So I don’t have any problems with that, if that’s where he’s going with it.”

The president’s comments on the podcast terrified Democrats concerned about democratic backsliding, and didn’t sit well with several Republicans, raising concerns around states’ rights and the implications of partisan gamesmanship. It was also unspecific enough that it allowed for a grab bag of explanations for what Trump was really talking about.

“I don’t really understand. I don’t know the back-channel dialogue that was around that,” Rep. Scott Franklin, a Republican from Florida, said. “I fully support states’ rights on elections, and I think that’s where it belongs.”

“We’re pretty strong states’ rights advocates there.”

Rep. Rich McCormick, who represents Georgia, said he had “mixed feelings” about nationalization.

“I love it when we’re in control. The problem is, just like getting rid of the filibuster and stuff like that, I worry that it would be used against us in the future,” McCormick told NOTUS. “I just want to make sure we don’t end up with these laws that change drastically every time we get a new administration.
But I do understand the reasoning behind it.”

The White House attempted to issue a clarification Tuesday, telling reporters that Trump was actually on message and referencing conservatives’ demands for a national voter-ID law.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Tuesday that “what the president was referring to is the SAVE Act,” a Republican-led bill to place proof-of-citizenship requirements on voter registration. That legislation has passed the House but is a nonstarter with Democrats in the Senate, where it would need to overcome the filibuster.

As for the “at least 15 places” he mentioned? “Again, with the passage of the SAVE Act, voter ID will be implemented across all 50 states,” Leavitt said. “The president was referring to specific states in which we have seen a high degree of fraud.”

That was not what Trump repeated on Tuesday: “If they can’t count the votes legally and honestly, then somebody else should take over,” he said at an Oval Office gaggle with reporters.

Existing federal law bars people without citizenship from voting in federal races anywhere. That didn’t stop Trump from baselessly suggesting on Bongino’s podcast that immigrants “were brought to our country to vote, and they vote illegally.”

“It’s crazy how you can get these people to vote,” Trump said. “And if we don’t get them out, Republicans will never win another election.”

Many Republicans were eager to back up a generalized Trump critique of how elections are run while shying away from the “take-over-the-voting” part of Trump’s call to action.

Reps. Young Kim and Carlos Gimenez, Republicans from California and Florida respectively, said they supported setting national standards for Election Day logistics — like when to count mail-in ballots and requiring voters to show identification. While they lamented state-by-state differences, they both stopped short of saying the federal government should “take over” anything.

“I’m not saying it should be nationalized, but there should be some standards,” Gimenez told NOTUS. “Like my state, we don’t accept any ballots that we received after 7 o’clock on election day. In other states, they receive ballots that are postmarked and all that other stuff.”

Rep. Brian Mast of Florida said Trump’s comments were just a riff on concerns around election integrity.

“It’s a response to all of this other illegal shit going on with federal elections,” Mast said. “There’s serious concerns about what different autonomies have done with not having real transparency in elections, like not caring whether there’s a voter ID, not giving a shit whether somebody votes at the appropriate time.”

Rep. Mike Kelly, too, chalked it all up to a commentary on election integrity.

“I didn’t agree with the election in 2020,” Kelly, who represents Pennsylvania, said after describing his qualms with how his state counted votes that election year. “A lot of that was brought on because of the way it was being handled then, so I mean, you can’t really blame people for questioning it.”

Kelly added that concerns from Democrats about Trump’s comments were symptoms of “Trump Derangement Syndrome.”

Many Democrats have said the president’s comments signaled what they have feared all along — a Trump-directed federal presence in the midterm election that further erodes public confidence in the fundamentals of democracy, or worse.

“This guy is deathly serious about stopping us from voting, bringing him to account,” Rep. Eric Swalwell, a Democrat from California, told NOTUS. “He’s got the National Guard, he’s got ICE, he’s got the Postal Service. He can do a lot of damage.”

“I always take him at his word. And then I multiply it by 10,” Swalwell continued.

The White House singled out states like California and New York, which Leavitt said allow “noncitizens to vote.” A local law allowing immigrants with legal status to vote in municipal New York City elections was struck down by the state’s highest court last year, and would not have applied to federal elections even if it weren’t. San Francisco allows undocumented immigrants to vote in school board races, and a handful of other municipalities across the country allow legal residents without citizenship to vote in local races.

A White House official highlighted some other states to NOTUS — Oregon was singled out for “removing 800,000 inactive voters from its voter rolls,” which the White House suggested meant the state is among those not maintaining “accurate and up-to-date voter rolls.”

Oregon Secretary of State Tobias Read is actively planning for White House to target his state.

As the Washington conversation was focused on what Trump meant or didn’t, in Oregon they were having meetings about tangible changes that already exist — FBI raids like the one in Fulton County, Georgia, or how the vote-by-mail-focused state will deal with new rules around postmarking.

“In Oregon, we follow the law and the Constitution. It’s why we’ll continue to stand up to the president every time he tries to abuse his power and meddle in America’s elections,” he told NOTUS. “We’ve already beaten him twice in court over issues like this, you’d think he’d get the hint.”

One person toeing that line the hardest is Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, who was pushed into the center of MAGA’s 2020 conspiracies after being pressured by Trump to “find” votes. It’s a main storyline in his current bid for the Republican gubernatorial nomination, and MAGA Republicans in the state are attacking him for refusing to participate in Trump administration efforts to collect Georgia voter data as part of the effort to reopen the election from six years ago.

Raffensperger is “focused on the future rather than rehashing old issues,” a spokesperson told NOTUS Tuesday when asked what they made of the president’s latest election comment.

After the FBI raided a Fulton County elections facility seemingly as part of Trump’s ongoing claims about the 2020 race he lost, Raffensperger told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, “I urge lawmakers to focus on strengthening state administration of elections rather than rehashing the same outdated claims or worse — moving to federalize a core function of state government.”

But that doesn’t mean he thinks there’s nothing to talk about when it comes to federal election law.

“The Secretary would like to see Congress act on his 5-point plan,” the spokesperson said. Raffensperger is calling for a national voter-ID law, and a national law following Georgia’s that bars people from collecting completed ballots and depositing them at drop-off sites — so-called “ballot harvesting.”

As for the SAVE Act, Raffensperger’s spokesperson said the office is focused on the Georgia secretary of state’s own plan, not anyone else’s.