Washington Post: Trump can’t delay the election, experts say
Washington Post: Trump can’t delay the election, experts say
President Trump on Thursday raised the prospect of delaying the November election while making unsubstantiated claims that mail-in voting will lead to fraud.
There has been no evidence to back up Trump’s repeated claims about fraud in mail-in voting. …
Even if he wanted to, though, the president has no power over when the United States holds federal elections. …
Congress. Unlike some constitutional language that can be widely interpreted, the founders were unambiguous about how Election Day would be chosen: Congress is charged with choosing the date, and that date must be the same for the entire country. …
Even in an emergency, such as a global pandemic, the president can’t circumvent Congress and postpone or cancel the general election. And it’s extremely unlikely Congress would move it.
“In an emergency, the president is able to do a lot of things he normally could not do, but only because he has been designated these powers by Congress in laws such as the National Emergencies Act,” said Sylvia Albert, director of voting and elections at Common Cause, a nonprofit group that advocates for eased ballot access. “But in this case, the Constitution empowers Congress, not the president, to select Election Day. No laws passed by Congress have delegated these powers to the president, even in an emergency, so Congress is the only entity that has the power to change the date of the election.”