Mark Elias, a veteran election lawyer known for defending the 2020 results, discusses the looming threats to the integrity of the upcoming elections. He highlights Trump's call for a national ban on mail-in voting and the Justice Department's dubious requests for voter data. Elias expresses concern over 're-gerrymandering' in Texas and the need for Democrats to match the tactics. He warns that upcoming congressional elections may not reflect the public's true voting preferences, urging vigilance against potential rollbacks of democratic norms.
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President Claims Control Over State Tabulation
Donald Trump seeks to control which votes count by claiming states are agents of the federal government.
Mark Elias warns this is a literal effort to rig outcomes rather than mere rhetoric.
insights INSIGHT
Historic Risk To Accurate Tabulation
Elias says 2026 risks elections that don't reflect everyone who wishes to vote or have votes tabulated accurately.
He frames this as a potential historic rollback of access and accurate tabulation.
volunteer_activism ADVICE
Rely On State Authority And Legal Protections
States administer elections under the Constitution and the president has no power to run them.
Elias implies defenders must lean on state control and legal protections to resist federal overreach.
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“The Constitution gives the states the power to set the time, place, and manner of elections,” the election lawyer Marc Elias points out. “It gives the President no [such] power.” Yet, almost one year before the midterms, Donald Trump has called for a nationwide prohibition on mail-in voting, an option favored by Democrats, as well as restrictions on voting machines. The Justice Department has demanded sensitive voter information from at least thirty-four states so far, with little explanation as to how the information will be used. Will we have free and fair congressional elections in 2026? “I am very worried that we could have elections that do not reflect the desires and the voting preferences of everyone who wishes they could vote and have their vote tabulated accurately,” Elias tells David Remnick. “That may sound very lawyerly and very technical, but I think it would be a historic rollback.” Elias’s firm fought and ultimately won almost every case that Trump and Republican allies brought against the 2020 election, and Elias continues to fight the latest round of incursions in court. And while he rues what he calls “re-gerrymandering” in Texas—designed to squeeze Texas’s Democratic representatives out of Congress—Elias thinks states run by Democrats have no choice but to copy the tactic. “Before Gavin Newsom announced what he was doing, I came out publicly and said Democrats should gerrymander nine seats out of California, which would mean there’d be no Republicans left in the delegation. . . . At the end of the day, if there’s no disincentive structure for Republicans to jump off this path, [then] it just continues.”
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