NO OTHER GODS Series | February 2026
THE ELECTION SEIZURE: Trump’s Plan to Nationalize Voting and What It Means for American Democracy
How a President with No Constitutional Authority Over Elections Is Moving to Control Them Anyway
By Janet Kira Lessin | Contributor Claudia Lenore | Aquarian Media Enterprises
On Monday, February 2, 2026, President Donald Trump told right-wing podcaster Dan Bongino that Republicans should “take over the voting” in at least fifteen places across the country and “nationalize the voting.” The next day, standing in the Oval Office surrounded by Republican lawmakers, he doubled down: “If a state can’t run an election, I think the people behind me should do something about it.”
He then said something that should have stopped the country cold: “A state is an agent for the federal government in elections. I don’t know why the federal government doesn’t do them anyway.”
This is not ambiguous. This is not a misquote. This is the President of the United States claiming authority over a process the Constitution explicitly denies him.
And it’s not just talk. It’s already happening.
* * *
The Fulton County Dry Run
Five days before Trump made those comments, on January 28, FBI agents descended on the Fulton County Elections Hub and Operations Center in Union City, Georgia. They seized hundreds of boxes of original 2020 ballots, tabulator tapes, electronic ballot images, and complete voter rolls—the entire paper and digital record of Fulton County’s 2020 election.
There was no advance notice. There was no chain-of-custody inventory. Fulton County Commissioner Marvin Arrington said afterward: “They got copies of our voter rolls and all the original ballots. Now we cannot verify that we’ve received everything back because there was no chain-of-custody inventory taken at the time the records were seized.”
County Commission Chairman Robb Pitts was blunter: “Once they left Fulton County… I don’t know where they are, I don’t know who has them, I don’t know what they’re doing with them.”
Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard was present at the raid. Think about that. The nation’s top intelligence official is personally supervising a ballot seizure from a majority-Black county in a swing state. This is not normal law enforcement. This is political theater with federal badges.
Election law attorney Marc Elias, who has spent decades in voting rights litigation, called the Fulton County operation what it was: a dry run. “It is one thing to seize old ballots,” he wrote. “It is quite another to imagine federal agents seizing ballots from county offices on election night or the day after.”
* * *
The Four-Step Plan
Elias has laid out what he sees as a four-phase strategy for the 2026 midterms. Looking at the evidence as of early February 2026, every phase is either underway or being staged:
Step One: Claim widespread illegal voting. Trump has been doing this since 2020, but the current version is more targeted. He’s merging his long-standing election denialism with the immigration crisis, claiming—falsely—that immigrants were “brought to our country to vote.” There is no evidence of meaningful noncitizen voting in federal elections. Multiple audits, multiple court cases, and multiple recounts have confirmed this. But the claim creates the pretext for everything that follows.
Step Two: Use the noncitizen fraud pretext to take over voting rules in swing districts. The SAVE Act, which would require proof of citizenship to register to vote, is being pushed as the vehicle for legislation. Noncitizens are already prohibited from voting in federal elections. The real purpose of the legislation is to create new barriers to registration in Democratic-heavy districts, particularly in communities with large immigrant populations where eligible citizens may lack the specific documentation required.
Step Three: Use the DOJ to seize ballots and take over vote counting. Fulton County was the proof of concept. The Justice Department has also sued to obtain voter data from multiple states—including Social Security numbers, party affiliations, voting histories, and signatures. This is not standard election oversight. This is building an apparatus of federal control over state election infrastructure.
Step Four: Full federal takeover—”nationalization.” If the targeted approach doesn’t guarantee a Republican majority, Trump has made it plain what comes next. In his own words on Truth Social: “The States are merely an ‘agent’ for the Federal Government in counting and tabulating the votes. They must do what the Federal Government, as represented by the president of the United States, tells them…to do.”
As a matter of constitutional law, this is flatly wrong. The Elections Clause gives Congress—not the president—the authority to regulate federal elections, and for 237 years, even Congress has exercised that power sparingly. The president has no constitutional authority over elections whatsoever. Constitutional scholars across the political spectrum have confirmed this. Georgetown’s Steve Vladeck, the libertarian Cato Institute’s Walter Olson, Temple University’s Tim Ford—left, right, center—they all agree: this is not a gray area.
But Trump, as Elias noted, “is not interested in following the Constitution. He prefers to act by force.”
* * *
The Bigger Pattern: Mid-Decade Gerrymandering, Mail-In Voting Bans, and ICE at the Polls
The nationalization rhetoric isn’t happening in isolation. It’s part of a coordinated multi-front assault on election integrity that’s been building for months:
Mid-decade redistricting: Trump demanded—and Texas complied—a mid-decade redraw of congressional districts, potentially adding five Republican seats. This is unprecedented. Redistricting has traditionally happened after each census, not whenever a president feels like it. The Supreme Court recently allowed California to counter with its own new voter-approved map, but the norm has been shattered.
Restrictions on mail-in voting: The House has passed legislation requiring voter ID and restricting mail-in ballots. Mail-in voting is how millions of Americans—particularly elderly, disabled, and rural voters—exercise their right to vote. Restricting it doesn’t fight fraud. It suppresses turnout.
Federal agents at polling places: Steve Bannon has publicly urged the administration to deploy ICE agents to polling sites for the November midterms. The chilling effect of armed federal immigration agents at voting locations in communities with immigrant populations is not a side effect—it is the purpose.
Voter data demands: The DOJ has sued more than twenty states to obtain sensitive voter information. Marc Elias has warned that this data can be weaponized to support targeted voter challenges, suppression laws, and post-election litigation aimed at invalidating results in specific districts.
* * *
Why This Matters More Than You Think: The Historical Context
A viral post by Chris Armitage, widely shared in January 2026, laid out the historical record of what happens when authoritarian leaders consolidate power after democratic elections. The examples are real: Germany in 1933, Italy in 1922, Spain in 1936, Hungary in 2010. The pattern repeats with numbing consistency—conservatives ally with authoritarians expecting to control them, the authoritarians purge the conservatives, and decades of dictatorship follow.
The optimists—and there are good reasons for optimism—point to counter-examples. Poland in 2023, where a massive opposition coalition voted out the illiberal Law and Justice party. Brazil in 2022, where Bolsonaro was defeated at the ballot box. South Korea, where candlelight rallies and institutional resilience have repeatedly checked authoritarian overreach.
These examples are real and important. But they share a critical feature: in each case, the authoritarian leader had not yet captured the election machinery itself. Poland’s PiS party didn’t control how votes were counted. Bolsonaro didn’t have the DOJ seize ballots. The distinction matters enormously.
The question for America in February 2026 is not whether our institutions are strong. They are. The question is whether our institutions can function when the head of the executive branch is actively using federal law enforcement to seize ballots, demanding federal control of elections, and deploying the machinery of government to intimidate voters—all while his party controls Congress and has reshaped the federal judiciary.
* * *
The Confidence Question
There’s a question that hangs over all of this, and it’s one that millions of Americans are asking privately even if the mainstream conversation hasn’t caught up: Why is he so confident?
Trump has never acted like a man worried about losing. Not in 2016, when every poll had him behind. Not in 2024. And not now, as he openly discusses taking federal control of an election system that the Constitution keeps out of his hands.
The official explanation is ego and bluster. Maybe that’s all it is. But the pattern of behavior—the systematic capture of election infrastructure, the DOJ weaponization, the ballot seizures, the gerrymandering, the voter suppression bills—suggests something more calculated than confidence. It suggests a plan. And a plan that’s well advanced.
When someone tells you they intend to take over the voting, believe them. When they start seizing ballots, know they mean it.
* * *
What Can Actually Be Done
The two responses people default to—panic and complacency—are both useless. Here’s what actually matters right now:
State-level resistance is the frontline. The Constitution gives election authority to states, not the president. Governors, secretaries of state, and state attorneys general are the firewall. Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold has already said plainly: “Trump is using the federal government to weaken our democracy, and he has escalated his attacks in his second term. He will not succeed.” California, New York, Illinois, Washington, and other states have the legal standing, economic power, and institutional capacity to resist unconstitutional federal overreach into their elections. This is not rebellion. This is federalism working as designed.
Legal challenges at every level. Marc Elias and Democracy Docket are already fighting this in courts across the country. Fulton County has filed suit demanding the return of its seized ballots. Federal judges have dismissed DOJ attempts to seize Georgia’s voter data. The legal infrastructure exists. It needs funding, attention, and public support.
The 2026 elections themselves. Despite everything, the elections are happening. The 2025 off-year elections were, by Marc Elias’s assessment, “a complete victory for Democrats and democracy”—from New Jersey to Virginia, from New York City to Georgia and Mississippi. Turnout matters more now than at any point in living memory. Every attempt to suppress the vote is designed to work at the margins. Overwhelming turnout defeats margin-based suppression.
Cross-partisan constitutional defense. This is not a partisan issue. The Constitution’s allocation of election authority to states was designed by the Founders specifically to prevent a president from controlling elections. Republican Senate leader John Thune has said he does not favor federalizing elections. Even House Speaker Mike Johnson, when pressed, said “No, no, no” to a federal takeover. Constitutional conservatives who believe in federalism, limited government, and the Tenth Amendment should be the loudest voices against this. Some are. More needs to be.
Follow the money. This is where the Move to Amend campaign and the push for the 28th Amendment become relevant—not as abstract policy, but as root-cause work. The concentration of corporate and oligarchic money in politics created the conditions for this crisis. The Citizens United decision opened the floodgates for the kind of dark money that funds election-denial infrastructure, voter suppression campaigns, and the political machinery that makes authoritarian capture possible. Ending corporate personhood and getting money out of politics aren’t side projects. It’s the foundation.
* * *
The Window Isn’t Closed. It’s Relocated.
The original Armitage post ends with a question: “Are we going to be the first generation that finds a new way out, or are we going to be another cautionary tale?”
I think the answer depends on whether we understand what’s actually happening. Not the sanitized version. Not the “institutions will hold” version. The real version: a president with no constitutional authority over elections is actively seizing ballots, demanding federal control of vote counting, deploying federal agents as election intimidation, and telling us exactly what he plans to do.
The window for prevention—stopping this before it starts—may be closing. But the window for resistance is wide open. The states have power. The courts are still functioning. The 2026 elections have not been cancelled. The opposition just won across the board in 2025.
Democracy is not glass. It doesn’t shatter from a single blow. But it can be ground down, bit by bit, if people assume someone else will protect it.
No one else is coming. This is our watch.
May Peace Prevail On Earth
* * *
Resources & Action
Democracy Docket – democracydocket.com – Real-time tracking of election cases nationwide
Move to Amend – movetoamend.org – Campaign for the 28th Amendment to end corporate personhood
Contact Your Representatives – Ask whether they support federal takeover of state elections. Put them on the record.
Register. Vote. Bring others. – The single most powerful act of resistance to voter suppression is showing up anyway.
© 2026 Aquarian Media Enterprises | WeAreOne.cc
THE ELECTION SEIZURE
Trump’s Plan to Nationalize Voting and What It Means for American Democracy
HEADER / FEATURED IMAGE
4
IMAGE TITLE: The Battle for the Ballot
Description:
A cinematic, symbolic representation of tension between federal power and state-run elections. A ballot box stands beneath shifting skies — storm and light — reflecting the fragile balance of democratic institutions.
Header Image Prompt (DALL·E / OpenArt / Gemini):
Photorealistic cinematic wide-angle image of an American ballot box in the foreground, subtle American flag behind it. Dramatic sky with storm clouds parting and rays of sunlight breaking through. Symbolic tension but hopeful tone. Ultra-detailed, realistic lighting, soft natural colors, high dynamic range, professional photography style. Landscape 16:9.
SECTION IMAGE 1
TITLE: Federal Power vs. State Authority
4
Description:
A visual metaphor of the constitutional tension between federal oversight and state-run elections.
Prompt:
Cinematic realistic composite image showing the US Capitol on one side and a state capitol building on the other, divided by soft light. American flag faintly overlayed. No people. Strong symbolic contrast. Photorealistic, dramatic but balanced lighting, ultra-detailed, landscape 16:9.
SECTION IMAGE 2
TITLE: Control of the Narrative
4
Description:
The struggle over election legitimacy often plays out in media ecosystems — traditional and digital.
Prompt:
Realistic newsroom interior with large digital election map screens glowing softly. Journalists reviewing data. Professional atmosphere, cinematic lighting, neutral tone. No specific individuals. Ultra-detailed, documentary style photography. Landscape 16:9.
SECTION IMAGE 3
TITLE: The Citizen’s Role
4
Description:
Whatever national debates occur, democracy ultimately rests on citizens and institutions at the local level.
Prompt:
Photorealistic image of diverse American citizens standing in line at a polling station, natural daylight, calm and orderly atmosphere. Subtle American flag visible. Hopeful tone. Ultra-detailed, cinematic realism, soft natural colors, landscape 16:9.
Optional Additional Interior Image
TITLE: The Constitutional Framework
4
Prompt:
Ultra-detailed close-up of the United States Constitution on a wooden desk with soft natural light. Supreme Court building faintly visible in background blur. Professional documentary style. Landscape 16:9.
