Trump’s argument for national control goes further than anything Republican presidents have ever broached, but there’s nothing new in Republican claims that Democrats steal elections.
There’s the case of Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley in the 1960 presidential election, when Republican Richard Nixon was sure that Daley had taken the state — and the election — from him. At a Christmas party a few weeks after the election, Nixon told guests, “We won, but they stole it from us.”
He had a point, but not a very strong one. Researchers since have concluded that there was fraud in Illinois, but not enough to tip the state. And even if Nixon had won Illinois, he still would not have had enough electoral votes to win the presidency.
Complaints about the Chicago Democratic machine go back years. In 1955, election official Sidney “Short Pencil” Lewis was accused of erasing primary votes cast for the mayor, Martin Kennelly, and changing them to votes for Daley, who won and used the victory to build his 21-year control of city hall. Lewis had a bag of tricks in the days before voting machines, including putting short pencils on a short string that made it exceptionally hard to vote for individual candidates — and far easier to check one box to vote straight Democratic.
In the aftermath of the 1960 election, furious Republicans called for investigations of fraud in the states, but they did not call for federalizing voting. The Constitution puts it plainly (Article 1, Section 4, Clause 1): “The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof.” In reviewing the issue in Smiley v. Holm in 1932, the Supreme Court underlined the importance of state control. “It cannot be doubted that these comprehensive words embrace authority to provide a complete code for congressional elections,” the court held.
In writing the Constitution, why did the founders put control of elections for federal officials in the hands of the states?
Part of the reason was simply pragmatic. As colonies, the states had already created their own election administration systems and their own systems of courts. The founders had enough on their hands as it was, so it was easiest to ask the states to continue doing what they had already figured out how to do.
In Federalist 59, Alexander Hamilton said it would have been impossible that “an election law could have been framed and inserted into the Constitution, which would have been always applicable to every probable change in the situation of the country.” Putting elections into the hands of the federal government, he worried, could prove “a premeditated engine for the destruction of the State governments.”
But that hasn’t satisfied Trump adviser Steve Bannon. “We’re going to have ICE surround the polls come November,” Bannon has said. “We’re not going to sit here and allow you to steal the country again.” In fact, he is willing to call up the 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions under the Insurrection Act during the 2026 midterm elections.
In a previous column, I told a story about the Insurrection Act and how Thomas Jefferson tried to use federal power to rein in his former vice president, Aaron Burr, who was trying to goad Mexico into a war over Louisiana. The consensus ever since has been that the use of the Insurrection Act was an extreme measure that ought to be employed with the utmost caution.
Republicans placed troops around polling places during Reconstruction, when federal troops sought to protect the newly established voting rights of Blacks against the Ku Klux Klan and other racist groups. The troops did not typically enter polling places but were stationed near courthouses and town centers to keep order — and to warn anyone who attempted to interfere with voting. Their presence did boost Black turnout.
The presence of federal troops, however, enraged many people in the South, who complained about “bayonet rule” by carpetbaggers. In 1876, Democrats were sure that the Republicans had used the troops to steal the presidential election. For Republicans, however, the initial count was disappointing. Republican nominee Rutherford B. Hayes appeared to be just one electoral vote shy of winning the Electoral College.
The parties finally reached a compromise. The Democrats agreed to seat electors who would vote for Hayes, giving the White House to the Republicans, in exchange for withdrawing troops from the South and ending Reconstruction. The Posse Comitatus Act, which prohibited the use of federal troops for domestic law enforcement, sealed the deal.
The Republicans did win the White House in 1876, but the compromise backfired spectacularly on them. The end of Reconstruction allowed the Democrats to create the “Solid South,” which put the region into Democratic hands from 1877 to the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
The history of using federal troops in elections is a wild tale. And it stands as a warning to anyone seeking to challenge the Constitution and its clear doctrine that the states are in charge of elections.
