A working document reviewed by PBS News sketches sweeping changes to election procedures under a national emergency. The central question is not whether the proposal is official policy, but whether a president could legally impose such changes at all.
Donald Trump has denied considering a national emergency declaration around the 2026 midterm elections. Yet a circulating 17-page draft reviewed by PBS News imagines expanded federal control over voting and could give a president extraordinary power over election procedures. The clash matters because the draft raises questions about the constitutional limits of presidential power over state-run elections.
Trump’s denial means there is no confirmed decision to pursue the document’s approach. Still, the proposal has drawn attention because it outlines concrete changes to ballots, vote counting, registration and citizenship checks—and because any effort to impose them through emergency authority would likely face an immediate legal challenge.
The proposal is not policy
The working document is not an announced White House policy. A White House official told PBS News that staff members regularly hear policy ideas from outside advocates, while cautioning that speculation about what Trump may eventually announce remains speculation.
That distinction is important. The available reporting does not establish whether the document is an outside proposal, an option under consideration or a paper with limited influence inside the administration.
Trump told PBS he was not considering a national emergency tied to the midterms. That is the confirmed position, even as the proposal continues to sharpen a broader dispute over the reach of presidential emergency powers.
What the 17-page draft envisions
According to PBS, the draft frames alleged foreign interference as a potential reason to declare a national emergency. It then hypothesizes that an emergency declaration could allow the president to take control of some voting mechanisms for the 2026 election.
The document contemplates several major changes:
- Hand-marked paper ballots.
- Votes counted by hand in public.
- Voter re-registration through county offices.
- Proof of citizenship for voters in the 2026 election.
PBS also reported that officials were encouraged to consider using the federal SAVE database, operated by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, to check voter files for citizenship status. The database is used by government agencies for benefits-related verification.
Those ideas move beyond a debate over any single voting rule. They raise the question of who gets to set election procedures nationwide when states ordinarily administer their own elections.
State control is the key issue
States run elections, while Congress has a limited role in regulating federal elections. A president does not have a general constitutional power to take over state election administration through executive order.
PBS reported that experts said a proposal like the circulating draft would likely trigger an immediate court challenge. The legal dispute would center on whether a national emergency could supply authority that election laws and the Constitution do not otherwise give to a president.
Max Flugrath, a spokesperson for the left-leaning voting-rights group Fair Fight Action, argued that it could not. In a statement, he said no statute permits a president to seize control of state-run elections through an emergency declaration.
Peter Ticktin, a lawyer who has known Trump for decades, offered a different view to PBS. He said presidents can act when they believe foreign powers are interfering with the country and pointed to the National Emergencies Act. But the ability to declare an emergency in some circumstances does not by itself settle whether emergency authority could override state election rules.
Related fights are already underway
The draft arrives amid existing disputes over voting rules and citizenship requirements. In March 2025, Trump issued an executive order seeking to add proof-of-citizenship requirements to federal voter-registration forms. PBS reported that multiple lawsuits challenging that order remain in court.
The Republican-led House also passed the SAVE America Act, which would require documentary proof of U.S. citizenship for voter registration and impose stricter voter-identification requirements. Its prospects in the Senate were uncertain, according to PBS.
Trump also wrote in a Truth Social post cited by PBS earlier in the month that there would be voter identification for the midterms “whether approved by Congress or not.” He called for citizenship requirements and restrictions on mail voting, with listed exceptions.
At the same time, voter ID rules are already common at the state level: 36 states require some form of identification at the polls, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. The unresolved issue raised by the draft is whether a president could impose a national approach by invoking emergency power.
Election officials focus on November
Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold said the reported draft should concern Americans across party lines, describing it as an attempted federal seizure of election administration.
Meanwhile, PBS reported that more than 100 election officials joined a call focused on preparing for the November midterms. Representatives from the Election Assistance Commission, the Departments of Homeland Security and Justice, the Postal Service and the FBI took part.
Participants told PBS that ICE agents would not be stationed outside voting locations. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said she had not heard Trump discuss a formal plan to place ICE outside polling places, though she did not offer an absolute guarantee about where agents might be in November.
The unanswered question is authority
The current facts are narrower than the draft’s most sweeping scenario: Trump says he is not considering an emergency declaration, and the document is not established as White House policy.
But the document has put a consequential constitutional question into view. A president may have tools to respond to an emergency, but it remains unresolved whether those tools could reach into the state-run machinery of elections.
That uncertainty is why the proposal has attracted scrutiny even without a confirmed plan to implement it. The debate is ultimately about the boundary between federal emergency action and the states’ role in administering the vote.
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