We are former Republican officeholders who spent our careers defending federalism and the decentralization of power from encroachment by the federal government, including attempts to nationalize elections through Washington mandates. Whether those attempts come from the right or the left, they should trouble any American who believes the U.S. Constitution means what it says, especially on the 250th anniversary of our nation’s founding.
Calls to federalize national elections run counter to the plain text of the Constitution and the federalist principles that underpin it.
Article 1, Section 4 of the Constitution explicitly grants states the authority to administer their elections, subject to limited congressional oversight. In Federalist No. 45, James Madison explained that the powers delegated to the federal government are “few and defined” while those reserved for the states are “numerous and indefinite,” and the latter indisputably include administering elections.
The federal government has no authority to “take over” state voting systems. The phrase itself would have most Republicans protesting had a Democrat administration called for it, and for good reason. Nationalizing elections would not make them more secure. On the contrary, a single national system creates a single point of failure – be it technological, bureaucratic or political.
Fifty distinct systems, run by states and localities with different procedures, personnel, and safeguards, are harder to manipulate at scale and easier to audit when something goes wrong. Reserving states the power to administer elections, therefore, is a bulwark against corruption and the best assurance of the integrity of our elections.
An example of this occurred in August 2025 when the state of Nevada’s computer networks were hacked. Nevada election data and systems were safeguarded and protected from the state computer network and remained unharmed while the rest of the state systems were offline for weeks. If the election data had been part of the larger state system, they could have been breached but fortunately they were protected.
Our elections are administered not by partisans but by thousands of professionals – county clerks, election administrators, and poll workers – who put their legal and ethical obligations before any political affiliation. They might not be perfect, but they are governed by law, transparency requirements, and bipartisan oversight.
Local, state run elections can also effectively respond to specific public concerns and demands. In Georgia, public confidence in the voting process significantly eroded after the 2020 election. In response, the state passed the 2021 Election Integrity Act which requires a driver’s license number on absentee ballots, secures ballot drop boxes around the clock, and requires poll workers to count votes until all are tabulated. A bipartisan statewide poll commissioned by the Democracy Defense Project recently found that 71% of respondents are confident in how elections are run, up from 56% two years ago.
The message is clear. Election integrity is not strengthened by federal takeovers but by straightforward laws, competent administration, and constitutional humility. We trust the states with those responsibilities, not Washington decrees that violate the very documents conservatives claim to revere.
We don’t need to abandon conservative principles to win elections. We need to remember them. Federalism is not a political slogan to be discarded when times change and we face a challenging political environment. It is the foundation of American liberty, and a core conviction of conservatives. If we surrender it now, we will not recognize the system we claim to be saving.
