Donald Trump cannot declare a national emergency and cancel the November 2026 or the November 2028 elections. Period. There is no basis in the Constitution or any federal law for the president to do so. No president, even in war time, has tried. The courts would surely declare any such efforts unconstitutional. But this does not mean that Trump cannot try to do other things to alter the outcome of the elections.
The idea of Trump trying to cancel an election comes from none other than Trump himself. In an interview with Reuters in January, Trump said that Republicans have been so successful that “when you think of it, we shouldn’t even have an election.” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt later said the president was “joking” and “being facetious” about canceling the election. But on other occasions, too, Trump has mentioned the possibility of not having an election. And there certainly is the strong sense that Trump acts as if he can do anything.
The Constitution requires federal elections every two years as that is when the terms of all members of the House of Representatives and one-third of the Senators expire. The Constitution also mandates a presidential election every four years. The date for federal elections is set by federal statute.
The Constitution has no clause that allows for this to be suspended in an emergency, even a war. Federal elections were held during the War of 1812, the Civil War, World War I, and World War II. Although in theory Congress could change the date of the election, that is unlikely and not something President Trump has the unilateral power to do.
Nor can Trump exercise control over how elections are conducted. An enormous protection of our electoral system is its decentralization. State governments are responsible for conducting elections, though for federal elections they must meet the requirements of federal statutes and, of course, the Constitution.
In March 2025, President Trump issued an Executive Order, “Preserving and Protecting the Integrity of American Elections.” The Executive Order would have required proof of citizenship in order for a person to register to vote. It also would have prevented counting absentee or mail-in ballots received after election day. In League of United Latin American Citizens v. Trump, a federal court in Washington, D.C. declared this unconstitutional because the President has no authority to impose such requirements. The court declared: “Our Constitution entrusts Congress and the States—not the President—with the authority to regulate federal elections. [N]o statutory delegation of authority to the Executive Branch permits the President to short-circuit Congress’s deliberative process by executive order.”
Congress is now considering a statute to impose some of these requirements in the proposed Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act. The SAVE Act would require that individuals provide documentary proof of citizenship when registering to vote and a photo identification at the time of voting. It would require voters submitting absentee mail ballots to provide a photocopy of their I.D. And it would mandate that states share voter registration data with the federal government, which most states have refused to do. It would also create personal criminal liability for election officials that violate the law.
The bill passed the House of Representatives in February 2026 and is being stalled in the Senate by a Democratic filibuster. President Trump has urged Republican Senators to change the Senate’s rules to allow this to pass with 50 votes (and if needed, the Vice President breaking a tie), rather than the 60 votes needed to end a filibuster. In fact, President Trump has said that he will not sign any other legislation passed by Congress, other than to restore funding for the Department of Homeland Security, until the Senate passes the SAVE Act. So far, Senate Republican leadership has indicated they don’t have the votes to change the Senate rules concerning the filibuster.
The SAVE Act, like President Trump’s Executive Order, is addressing a problem that does not exist. And it would have devastating consequences with regard to the right to vote. There is no evidence that non-citizens are registering to vote and casting ballots. A federal law, the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996, already explicitly prohibits non-citizens from voting in federal elections. It is a felony for a person to falsely attest under penalty of perjury to being a citizen and eligible to vote.
Many studies have been done and all have come to the same conclusion: Instances of non-citizens voting are extremely rare. A study in 2017, by the Brennan Center, looked at 42 jurisdictions where 23.5 million votes were cast, and found only 30 instances in which there were investigations of non-citizens voting, or 0.0001 percent of the ballots cast. The Heritage Foundation, which has advocated passage of the SAVE Act, found that since the 1980s, out of over a billion ballots cast, there are only 68 documented instances of non-citizens voting.
Some states have also carefully reviewed their elections to investigate whether non-citizens are voting and found that it just isn’t happening. Utah, for example, did a review of its entire voter list from April 2025 through January 2026. After an exhaustive review of two million registered voters, it found only one instance of a noncitizen registering to vote and zero instances of a non-citizen voting. In Georgia, a 2024 audit of its 8.2 million registered voters found only 20 noncitizens who had registered.
While the SAVE Act would do nothing to protect the integrity of elections, it would have the effect of keeping many citizens from being able to register to vote. The law would require that in order to register to vote a person would have to prove citizenship by presenting an original birth certificate or a passport or a naturalization certificate. Many people do not have any of these. The Brennan Center estimates that more than 21 million Americans lack ready access to those documents.
Indeed, many people have been kept from registering to vote in states that have adopted a proof of citizenship requirement. For example, when Kansas adopted a requirement for proof of citizenship in order to register to vote, 31,000 citizens – or 12 percent of all applicants – were kept from registration. Quite importantly, this figure does not reflect how many people chose not even to bother to register to vote if they had to go to the extra step of obtaining an original birth certificate or applying for a passport.
Hopefully, Democratic Senators will succeed in continuing to block this from becoming law. But expect President Trump to keep trying to meddle in the coming election. A draft of a 17 page Executive Order that would create federal control over every aspect of elections has been leaked. It is a stunning document that would, among other things, prohibit most Americans from casting a mail ballot. It would also require all 211 million Americans already registered to vote to re-register in person at an election office for the 2026 midterm elections by proving their citizenship using only their birth certificate, passport, or naturalization certificate. If adopted, this Executive Order, like its predecessor, is sure to be struck down by the courts as unconstitutional.
Some believe President Trump will station ICE agents around polling places to discourage citizens from going to vote for fear of being hassled or even apprehended. Earlier this month, New Mexico adopted a law prohibiting armed federal agents near polling sites. California’s legislature is considering a similar prohibition. It is unclear whether a state can regulate the federal government in this way. But the fear is real that President Trump might try and use federal agents to discourage people from voting in Democratic areas.
There will be elections in November 2026 and November 2028. But even Russia has elections. The question will be how much President Trump can do to control them. Hopefully, courts will enforce the many legal protections that exist to stop him from undermining our democracy.
