Who runs US elections? Why the Constitution puts states and Congress in charge.

Having overthrown a monarch, the founders of the United States imbued their new governing documents with a distrust of centralized power. That distrust extended to elections.Instead of elections run by a central government, the Constitution entrusts the states with determining the “Times, Places, and Manner” of voting for senators and representatives. Congress can pass laws governing how elections work, the document adds, but state and local officials would carry out the bulk of that work.The Constitution is silent on a role for the president in election administration, even though it does task the executive branch with enforcing federal law (including voting laws). In a break with tradition, the Trump administration is now trying to use its enforcement power to gain some influence over national election processes, ranging from trying to acquire confidential voter information to regulating mail-in ballots. The efforts aim to address President Donald Trump’s claims of widespread voting fraud, for which courts and independent researchers have not found evidence. Why We Wrote This The crafters of the U.S. Constitution, wary of centralizing power, gave states and Congress oversight over national elections. The president’s role is to enforce federal laws, including voter laws. The Trump administration is now testing the boundaries of that enforcement power, in the name of rooting out voter fraud. It’s unclear whether these efforts will be in effect during this year’s midterm elections. Mail-in ballots are already being sent to voters, and the Trump administration has seen little success in the courts. But the efforts represent a stark departure from how U.S. elections have been run for 250 years.“There’s really no precedent for the federal government getting involved in” national elections, says Alex Keyssar, an elections historian at Harvard University. “Not at this microlevel of election administration.”Why does the Constitution place oversight of elections with states and Congress?James Madison, known as the “Father of the Constitution” for his role drafting the document, defended the way the framers set up elections during a debate in Virginia in 1788 on whether to ratify the new governing charter.He noted: “It was found necessary to leave the regulation of [elections], in the first place, to the state governments, as being best acquainted with the situation of the people.” The role of Congress, he said, was to “produce uniformity” and prevent the dissolution of the federal government. Olivia McCall (center left), director of the Wake County Board of Elections, speaks while Board of Elections employees prepare absentee ballots to be mailed on Sept. 3, 2026, in Raleigh, North Carolina. The Constitution directs state and local officials to set the "Times, Places, and Manner" of elections for senators and representatives. Congress has passed election-related laws on several occasions. The National Voter Registration Act (NVRA), enacted in 1993, required states to expand voter registration opportunities to Departments of Motor Vehicles and via the mail. The Help America Vote Act (HAVA), passed in 2002, created new standards for states to modernize and improve voting information, upgrade equipment, and create and maintain statewide databases of registered voters. Prior to those, the Civil Rights Act of 1960 provided federal enforcement of the 15th Amendment’s prohibition on racially discriminatory state voting laws.How is the Trump administration trying to take a larger role with elections?In February, Mr. Trump said that his party should “nationalize” elections. A month later he issued an executive order instructing a variety of federal agencies to compile “State Citizenship Lists” of eligible voters to be distributed to state election officials. Since last year, the Department of Justice has been attempting to obtain states’ voter rolls, including sensitive information such as complete social security numbers and driver’s license numbers, so it can ensure states have not registered ineligible voters. Over recent months the Trump administration has fought in the courts to implement a policy empowering the Postal Service to send mail-in ballots only to eligible voters identified by individual states.The history of voting laws in the U.S. has been a history of compromise between expanding the franchise and bolstering its security, and critics worry that the proposed Trump policies go too far in one direction. The USPS restrictions on distributing mail-in ballots, for example, could result in technical errors that disenfranchise thousands of eligible voters, a whistleblower at the agency recently claimed.Supporters worry about mistakes that have occurred, such as a software error in New Jersey that registered about 6,600 noncitizens as voters from June 2023 to June 2024. (About 400 of them voted in New Jersey, according to reports.) The Constitution requires the president to “faithfully execute” federal laws, and the Trump administration has been vigorously enforcing the election laws passed by Congress in its recent efforts to crack down on voting fraud.The twist: Federal voting laws have typically been enacted and enforced as a means of expanding the franchise, not contracting it. The administration has argued, for example, that the Civil Rights Act – enacted as a tool for challenging state voting laws designed to restrict Black voting power – grants the federal government a “sweeping” authority to obtain state voter records.How are the Trump administration’s efforts faring in court?So far, the courts have not been friendly to the Trump administration’s efforts. The DOJ has filed 31 lawsuits seeking sensitive information in state voter rolls and seen its case dismissed in 23 of them (seven are pending and Oklahoma settled its case). The only appeals court to hear an appeal on the issue so far has upheld the lower court dismissal. Attorney General Todd Blanche speaks at the Republican convention in Dallas, Sept. 9, 2026. The Department of Justice has filed 31 lawsuits seeking sensitive information in state voter rolls and seen its case dismissed in 23 of them. Attorney General Todd Blanche has suggested he may appeal such a case to the U.S. Supreme Court. And the high court has provided the administration one victory in its efforts to transform American elections. In a procedural ruling two weeks ago, the court allowed the administration to begin implementing Mr. Trump’s executive order from late March. The case is already back at the high court, this time focused on the USPS rule on mail-in ballots. An emergency docket ruling is expected within days.The rule is constitutional, the administration argues, because it regulates “the U.S. Mail – not federal elections.”