On April 12, a draft of an executive order that would give the President extraordinary control over voting across the United States was published by Trump allies. It quickly circulated among elections conspiracy theorists.
The Washington Post claimed to have found an earlier version of this document, but has not published it as of the time this is being written.
The activists who constructed the draft claim to be in coordination with the White House. The executive order is intended to take control over the voting process, specifically by banning mail-in ballots and voting machines, using adversary China as a pretext to do so. Peter Ticktin, a proponent of the executive order and Trump ally, was transparent about the ploy:
“Under the Constitution, it’s the legislatures and states that really control how a state conducts its elections, and the president doesn’t have any power to do that,” said Peter Ticktin, a Florida lawyer who is advocating for the draft executive order. Ticktin attended the New York Military Academy with Trump and was part of his legal team that filed an unsuccessful 2022 lawsuit accusing Democrats of conspiring to damage him with allegations that his 2016 campaign colluded with Russia.
“But here we have a situation where the president is aware that there are foreign interests that are interfering in our election processes,” Ticktin went on. “That causes a national emergency where the president has to be able to deal with it.”
The Washington Post
Other supporters of the executive action include Jerome Corsi, a conspiracy theorist that also circulated it. He was investigated by former special counsel Robert S. Mueller III for potential links between himself, WikiLeaks, and Roger Stone. Right-wing lawyer Cleta Mitchell was the first to publish the April 12 version of the executive order. She falsley claimed that the American electoral system was “porous” and that threats to national security were sufficient to take executive control over elections (note that the United States continued to hold elections even when the existence of the nation was in contention, including the Revolutionary War, Civil War, and Second World War).
The draft further justifies itself by citing executive (not legal) precedent; in 2018, he signed an order that sanctioned foreign entities that interfered in America’s democratic process. The order was extended by former President Joe Biden, which enabled him to sanction Iranian and Russian actors. However, this prior executive order was never used to take control over an election.
Another canard employed by elections conspiracy theorists is that China interfered in the 2020 election on behalf of Biden. While China regularly interferes in the American political process, it only considered plans to interfere in that election, but did not go through with them. Accusations of Chinese “bamboo ballots” in Arizona proved to be baseless according to a Republican-led audit.
Trump has been attempting to lay the groundwork for federal interference in state-run elections. Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard lied that former President Barack Obama interfered in the 2016 election against Trump. Bizarrely, she was present at a Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) raid against the Fulton County elections facility, which itself was inspired by conspiracy theories. Attorney General Pam Bondi has sought voter rolls from every state in the country, and has sued those that refuse to comply. On February 13, Trump suggested that he will present an “irrefutable” executive order to take control over elections.
