President Donald Trump in the White House Rose Garden on April 2, 2025 (Official White House Photo by Daniel Torok/Flickr)
President Donald Trump’s attempts to nationalize US elections, which are inherently local according to the Constitution, has hit a state of overdrive, according to a recent report.
“The man on the line said he was an agent at the Department of Homeland Security – and he needed immediate access to voter records,” reported Ned Parker and Peter Eisler of Reuters on Monday. They were describing a shocking phone call that an Ohio election official received from the Trump administration demanding sensitive voter information. “Franklin County has a large population of Democrats and has long been a focal point of Republican skepticism about urban voting centers in Ohio.”
Reuters confirmed that the agent asked for voter registration forms and voting histories for dozens of voters, as well as for information about local voter-registration groups.
The requests were a bolt from the blue for Franklin County election officials. Under the U.S. Constitution, elections – even for national offices such as the presidency – are run by states, not the federal government. Adding to the confusion, DHS’s mission has traditionally focused largely on counterterrorism, border security and immigration enforcement.
“We’d never received a call from Homeland Security before, so that was unusual,” Antone White, Franklin County’s elections director, told Reuters. The wire service went on to describe how the incident in Ohio is part of a larger pattern.
“The Ohio episode is part of a larger pattern Reuters found in at least eight states: a wider-than-known federal push into the machinery and conduct of U.S. elections, which since the founding of the republic in 1789 have been run by states and local governments,” Parker and Eisler wrote. “Trump administration officials and investigators have fanned out across the country, seeking confidential records, pressing for access to voting equipment and re-examining voter-fraud cases that courts and bipartisan reviews have already rejected.”
In addition to Ohio, Trump officials have used the FBI to demand Nevada’s secretary of state provide voter information; have had a cybersecurity official approach a Colorado county clerk; and have sued 30 states over voter rolls. They have also intervened in elections in Missouri, Connecticut, Georgia and Michigan.
“I am worried, as I have said and others have been pointing out, about whether we will even have free and fair elections in 2026, let alone in 2028,” conservative historian Robert Kagan said in February about Trump’s attempts to nationalize elections. “I think Trump has a plan to disrupt those elections, and I don't think he's willing to allow Democrats to take control of one or both houses as could happen in a free election.”
Constitutionally, the federal government does not have the right to control elections, as they are explicitly delegated to the local level. As centrist thinker William Galston wrote for The Brookings Institute in February, “To clarify this issue, the place to begin is the Constitution — specifically, Article I, section 4,” adding that the provision dictates elections “shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations, except as to the Places of choosing Senators.”
