Lawfare Daily: Can the President Declare an Elections Emergency?

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“And it was drafted, and then now it's been circulating.”

And allegedly, it has the attention of the White House.

It's the law fair podcast on Benjamin Wittis, editor-in-chief of law fair here with Molly Roberts and Anna Bauer, both law fair senior editors. One big risk is that the president issues this order. He issues it close to the election.

And it's unclear to states whether they're supposed to comply. It's also possible that red states would go ahead. And comply, even though their laws haven't been properly adjusted to do this,

that they would say, oh, yeah, we're going to try to enforce all of that. Today, we're talking election craziness.

A draft executive order has been floating around

that would assert presidential control over elections all over the country. How seriously should we take it? What would it do and who was behind it? All right, Molly, start us out.

How did you get on this crazy subject? Well, I, unfortunately, often read the president's truth-social posts. And I'd been seeing some ominous looking tweets, truths, whatever we're supposed to call them, or the president

was saying that he was going to present a quote-unquote irrefutable legal argument in the form of an executive order on the subject of elections, kind of related

to the stalling out of the Save America act in Congress.

So I'd been keeping an eye on that and thinking, oh, God, what could this be? And then the Washington Post published a story about the president considering an executive order on election.

“So I thought, oh, maybe that's what it is.”

And started to look into it. So the president has issued an executive order on elections once before. So for those who are a little bit tied around the axle about this whole subject and can't keep the legislation

separate from the prior executive order, separate from the future executive order that may or may not be real, give us a little bit of background here to situate people, what has already happened and what

are they proposing in legislation and what is contemplated in further executive orders? - Yeah, and I don't blame people for being confused in having trouble keeping up because it's a lot of overlapping, but not exactly overlapping objectives over the course

of a lot of time and coming in a lot of formats, some of them sort of hypothetical and some of them already existing. So I guess the place to start would be with the March 2025 executive order.

And that is an executive order that was issued. And that executive order was also about voter identification, registration, having to do with showing their papers, or citizens showing their papers when registering to vote, it mostly tried to achieve that mandate

by instructing the Election Assistance Commission, which is an independent agency that supports election administration to change its registration forms, which it sends my mail to require a passport

or a photo ID that proves citizenship.

“And I don't know if people remember getting their real ID”

was a big slog that seems like a pretty intense form of ID. It does not prove citizenship. So that's an ID that almost nobody has. So that's what that was trying to do. It didn't try to make Americans vote in person,

but it tried to make registration harder. And that was kind of the main thing that that acted it also had to do with the dissertification of a lot of voting machines and they could only be resertified if they met really stringent standards.

That expert said we're super expensive, super time consuming and just not really feasible to get done before the midterms. So that was the March order. Did not fare well in court.

The central provisions that have been blocked by three federal courts. So not working out great for the president and his allies who want to make it harder to vote

for a demographic that they think

will be voting for Democrats to vote. So that brings us to kind of the political drama of the moment, which is the Save America Act in Congress. And the Save America Act is really similar to what we were just talking about with the March executive order,

but not completely the same. So it would require the vast majority of Americans to register to vote in person and to show a photo ID, but also proof of citizenship. So passport, birth certificate,

but everything has to match, which can be difficult. So like one big example that people have brought up about for whom this would be difficult is women who change their names when they got married. And so that's a Save America Act.

It does not ban mail in ballots. Although the president has wanted it to ban mail in ballots, it would make it a little harder to vote by mail. And then it would also force states to submit voter rolls regularly

to the Department of Homeland Security, which is ties in with a separate effort that the White House has been undertaking.

“And I think that's kind of the TLDR on the Save America Act.”

And again, it looked for a long time. Like it was definitely not going to pass. And now it's way more of a real legislative battle over that. Which brings us to this draft executive order. And I know I've been going on and on and on,

but that brings us to the draft executive order. The Save America Act when it looked like it really wasn't going to pass. And still now, the president was quite upset about it. And was tweeting a lot about how he really needed

to achieve these objectives. He was saying there will be voter ID for midterm elections, whether approved by Congress or not. He said, the people of our country want the citizenship, well, not exactly requirements, right?

And enforcement of those requirements. They don't want mail in ballots, which again, not actually in the act. He also said that they don't want transgender for everyone, which is something he's been pushing to get

in the Save America Act, but I think that's more off the table. - And just to be clear, that has obviously nothing to do with elections, right? - Yeah, yeah, nothing to do with elections. He seemed to get a little distracted in the middle

of his tweet and move on to some culture war stuff. He said, playing in women's sports, open borders, and transgender for everyone. So he mentioned it, but even these activists who I'm about to get to, they didn't even try to put that in their order.

So the draft executive order and Anna can talk about who the activists are pushing this, but it would try to achieve sort of a combination of what's in the Save America Act, and what's in the March 2025 order,

and then add some stuff on top of that, particularly as regards mail-in ballots. It is way stricter on the question of mail-in ballots than any of those acts. So I mean, I could go through every single detail

of what it is, but that would take me, and I've already been going on for like five minutes, that would take me like five zero minutes.

It is basically kind of every election,

deniers, fantasy, wishlist. So I'll stop there. All right, so give us the history of this draft executive order. It shows up the other day a few weeks ago

in a Washington Post story, but it actually has a little bit of history before that before we get to the characters who were behind it.

“Is this an order the president is preparing to sign?”

Or should we assume that the president, like what's the status of this draft executive order? Where does it come from and what do we think the president is likely to do with it? - I think Anakin speaks to that for sure.

I think the details of where and who it comes from. I think that, as far as the bigger picture question

of basically how seriously should we be taking this,

the people involved are really fringe actors. The legal theories they're putting forth are, I don't even know if fringe is the word, they're just totally laughable. They're really easy to dismantle,

but the president has a history of taking those kinds of-- - You mean it's not an assailable, you know? - It's not an assailable, it's not a refutable, it's not ironclad, it's the opposite of all those things you could puff and puff and blow it down.

So it's hard to read and take it seriously, but also think back to 2020 when the president did seriously entertain a draft executive order that similar to this one would have declared a national emergency on elections

so that he could go in and seize voting machines using the department of defense. He recently said he regrets not doing that, he didn't do it, but he thought about it.

“So I think that reading this executive order”

and saying, oh, the president is going to sign exactly this would be a little silly,

considering any of the ideas at all that bits

“and pieces of them might work their way into policy”

that maybe even more dangerously a slightly stronger version of this could end up on his desk. - All right, Anna, where does this thing come from and who is the strange cast of characters who gave rise to it?

- Yeah, so Ben, we talk about this in the piece that the origin story here's a little bit murky. It's very hard to pin down, and it's not entirely clear exactly who all was involved in the drafting of this 17 page draft elections executive order.

It's also not even clear if like how many versions are circulating of this order.

We spoke to, for example, Peter Tickton, who is a friend

of Trump's for many years. They've known each other since they were teenagers.

“They were at the New York military academy together.”

Tickton subsequently is an attorney and has represented Trump unsuccessfully, actually, in civil litigation in Florida that he brought against Hillary Clinton and others. That was the case in which Tickton and Alina Haba

and others were sanctioned for making representations through the court that were frivolous according to the court. But we spoke to Mr. Tickton because he was named in this Washington Post article as one of the reponents of this draft executive order.

And he provided a copy of it to democracy, docket prior to our publication of our article. And so we spoke to him and what he told us is that he wrote a kind of precursor to this 17 page version that is now circulating.

And he does not know who wrote that particular version. But that version is the one that he has sent to President Trump, according to him. He says he emailed it to Trump. I did not know the Trump even had an email.

I mean, I'm sure that he does, but I didn't know he emailed. So it's not entirely sure exactly how that works. But Tickton told us that he has a direct line of communication to the White House and to Trump. He also told us that he's raised this issue

with Kurt Olsen, who is the White House election integrity supervisor and has been a long time election to Nyer before his current position in government. And then we also spoke to Tickton about who else is kind of a proponent of this order.

And he named a few familiar names, Patrick Bern, Mike Flynn, and then Stephanie Lambert, who is an attorney who is now awaiting charges on election tampering in Michigan. So it's kind of a familiar cast of characters who are the proponents of this.

And it's not entirely clear, although Tickton said that he has reached out to the President, Trump himself in response to questions from reporters has said that he didn't know what people are talking about when they asked about this draft executive order.

So it's not entirely clear exactly to what extent the White House or Trump himself is considering it. However, we did a little bit more digging into the history of this particular order. And it's pretty fascinating story

been the people who were involved. After we spoke to Tickton, I did a deep dive on rumble listening to old podcast and videos about this national emergency and draft executive order. And as far as I can tell from what we've uncovered

“in our reporting, one of the key figures here”

is this guy who goes by the name 107. He is a QAnon figure, kind of QAnon influencer. His real name is Wayne Willett. He's a former private investigator in Washington state according to reporting from the Daily Beast.

And he kind of became this QAnon influencer. There's a conspiracy theory about him, actually,

that he has never confirmed nor denied,

but kind of seems to play into it a little bit in his public appearances. But there's this theory that he himself is actually JFK Jr, who died in the '90s famously, but living under an assumed identity.

So--

like delusional system.

Yeah, it's completely delusional.

And people have all these theories.

“And this is a theory I should say, QAnon.”

There's a few people in QAnon that QAnon followers think could be JFK Jr, because they're-- And just to be clear, we're not talking about the reincarnation of JFK Jr. We're talking about the--

He didn't die in that plain brush and has been secretly living under-- Yeah, and there's a version of the conspiracy theory that involves the person who is JFK Jr. living under assumed identity, revealing himself,

and teaming up with Trump as a running-- Right, so go after the pedophiles. Yeah, so I mean, it's crazy, it's crazy, right?

You never thought you'd be talking about the law fair podcast.

There are so many dead candidates you'd think they diversify a bet. You'd think they wouldn't win. You know, it's just only JFK Jr. But he kind of plays into it.

“This one, '07, figure by, like, whenever he does podcast,”

he will never, ever put his face on camera. It's always kind of pointing the camera in a different direction. So you can only hear his voice, because people think that his voice sounds like JFK Jr. for some reason. And there's all these video cuts of people

comparing his voice to JFK Jr. anyway. So this one, '07, character, who himself has a history with some of these election conspiracists, like Patrick Burn and Mike Flynn, because he was this one, '07, was one of the people who was making a lot of claims

about the 2020 election. And he has said on podcasts that he convened in January of shortly after the inauguration in 2025, after the 2024 election, he convened a group of what he called legal minds and election experts

to try to put together a draft executive order like the one that we eventually became the 17-pager that democracy-docket published on that Peter Tickton provided to them. And they worked, he said, over the course of several months,

this coalition of people. They went through 13 versions of this order

until they finally settled on the one that was released back in.

I believe it was April of 2025, different versions of this 17-page draft executive order started being circulated. And Ben, I should mention, too, note that the draft executive order is 17 pages.

17 is a number that is important in Q and on followings because we have reached the numerology stage of the conversation. Because Q is the 17th letter of the alphabet. And so a lot of Q and on followers see the number 17 as a kind of coded signal.

Right.

“And whether or not that's what we're talking about this.”

Yeah, I'm just giving you all of the color, OK? Around who created this draft executive order that allegedly the president might be using as a source for some future executive orders. But so one of seven talks about this.

He makes these claims. And I mean, keep in mind, this is the same guy who is the subject of theory that he is actually JFK junior. So maybe don't take his word as truth, take it with a grain of salt.

But he claims that this 17 page draft executive order has been on the president's desk. That is something that it is going to happen. And then beyond that, there's other people who have claimed involvement who confirmed to us

that they were part of the 107 coalition. We talked to Tim Kenova, who was a law professor at Nova Southeastern University School of Law. He was a part of this coalition of people who got together to try to draft this thing.

And he also indicated to us that one of the leaders in kind of coordinating this group was a man named Garland Fevrito. Now Garland Fevrito probably is not a familiar name for most people who are listening to this podcast.

But it was a very familiar name to me because I've reported a lot on election happenings in Georgia.

He runs a very influential group called Voter GA.

Now we also contacted Garland. And so I should mention this that he claimed when we asked him for comment that he has not read the executive order. And he declined to comment on it.

He did not specifically address the question of whether he was one of the people involved in coordinating this order. But in terms of other people, it's also other kind of election integrity activists. People like Mark Cook, Laura Shar,

who are involved in various states with kind of so-called election integrity work and who have been also proponents of a 2020 election conspiracy theory.

So that's the group been.

And as far as we can tell, that is kind of the history of it is that this 107 character got a coalition together. And it was drafted and then now it's been circulating. And allegedly has the attention of the White House.

“So I listen to you and I think, wow, this sounds like a bunch”

of cooks. And my immediate instinct is to not take seriously the idea that the president would actually sign this. And so Molly, walk me through why I should take this seriously.

Yeah, sure. So I guess one thing that I would add to everything Anna just said is that soon after the post story about the existence of this executive order,

pro-publica reported that Michael Flynn had convene election

integrity summit at which Kurt Olsen, who Anna just mentioned, and Heather Honey, who has a role overseeing election integrity at the Department of Homeland Security, were in attendance. And so those are officials in the administration

who are confabbing with these people. And Heather Honey had previously voted exactly this idea that Trump could declare a national emergency to justify taking more control over elections.

“I think another reason to take it somewhat seriously”

is that the president really likes invoking national security and declaring national emergencies to pursue his agenda. I mean, he said an invoked national security for the tariffs. Of course, we know that from the Supreme Court case. And he has invoked it for things that people are less aware of,

like terminating offshore wind projects or even continuing to construct the White House ballroom because the under the East Wing, there's a bunker that is an emergency bunker for the president and sort of saying that the whole project is imperative for national security

because of that and stopping construction. This is the representation of the Department of Justice made and a lawsuit against them for the construction would imperil the president. And so he likes declaring national emergencies

and he definitely is of the view and has essentially articulated the view that saying national security, declaring a national emergency, lets him do things that otherwise he's not able to do. And of course, a big thing that he's not able to do

that he's been very clear about wanting to do, that he has explicitly said he wants to do and his tweets is take more control over elections. So I would say that that is the reason and take it seriously.

And of course, as I mentioned, he did entertain. We know that he entertained and he himself looked at and has said that he regrets taking a similar but different, I suppose you could view it as more extreme action after the 2020 election.

“So I think that those are the reasons to take it somewhat”

seriously, but again, I wouldn't take it seriously in that. I wouldn't say this 17 page executive order, every provision of it, he would try to enact the executive order and I also wouldn't say that the precise legal reasoning in it

is reasoning that he would attempt to deploy. And we could talk more about the precise legal reasoning in it. Yes, so we're going to get to that in a minute. But so you're not suggesting that he will, that this draft executive order will be signed as such.

You're really suggesting more that he has said that if the, say fact does not pass, he will sign something and this is one of the inputs

- Yes, exactly, and I think another big reason to take it seriously is he already tried to do it. He did it and we tried to do something really similar in March 2025 and the problem was that, I mean, there would be problems with saying

there's a national emergency too, but the idea here would be here's everything they told you you couldn't do in that a draft executive order. You can try to do it again.

“All you have to do is say national security,”

is say national emergency. And we know that actors in the administration are interested in looking at the idea of foreign interference in the election. And that would be kind of the pretext.

The idea would be this is a national emergency. This is a national security threat because there's been interference by. And then there's a whole host of other conspiracy theories involving China, Venezuela, even Serbia.

And so when we look a little more closely at the legal reasoning here, it also points more to that idea that they would be trying to establish foreign interference in the election in order to declare that national emergency. But again, the foreign interference thing,

something that Trump has been interested in, something

“tells you, "Gabbert has been interested in,”

certainly something heard also, and has been interested in."

I will also just add that in this second Trump administration,

there is a case for taking fringe actors seriously. And by that, I mean, not the substance of what they're arguing seriously, but when they say they're going to do something, or when they say they have some kind of policy impact

on the White House to take that seriously, because these are people who are now at the center, kind of. They're really, well, they are fringe, but they have real influence and power on the people who are at the highest level of power

in the government. Garland has connections with Kurt Olsen. So Peter Tickden goes way back with Trump. Like these are the proponents allegedly of this order. And there are people where there is verifiable connections

between them and the president and the people around him.

“And so I think that there's a case for taking that seriously,”

even if you don't take the ideas seriously. All right. So let's talk about this legal theory.

As I understand it, it's basically that,

although the Constitution gives line authority for the holding elections to the states, and although the body that it allows to regulate that is Congress, not the executive branch, if the president whispers the words national emergency or maybe national emergency

in all caps with exclamation marks, he can override the Constitution, the pretty clear language of a few different constitutional provisions and sort of assert authority over it. Is that the basic theory here or is there more to it than that? That is the basic theory here.

There is more to it in that there are details. There's not more to it in that it's a much stronger legal argument with real serious substance. So as you said, the president doesn't have any authority over elections. The elections cause of the Constitution says that it's up to the states,

but that Congress has the power to make or alter such regulations. So what power does the president have?

So the idea here is basically that national emergency,

two magic words that give the president all the powers that Congress would otherwise have. One interesting thing that we experienced when we were chatting with these people for my point of view, at least, was that they kept just kept saying,

well, the national emergency's act, the national emergency's act. And they seem to believe that the national emergency's act was the statute that empowered the president to say national emergency and then take whatever actions are necessary, whatever actions he deems necessary,

to resolve a national emergency that he's declared. Now, some of them did seem to believe that he would actually have to establish the existence of this national emergency, which goes to the foreign interference thing I was saying, rather than just declare a national emergency,

you know, Michael Scott style, I declare a bankruptcy and you're good to go. But once he's established a national emergency, they seem to think he can do anything. But sort of a profound misinterpretation of the national emergency's act,

It rains in the president by saying that he has to declare the emergency,

“then point to a specific statute that gives him specific powers.”

The problem here is that no statutes give the president power over elections. The kind of very odd thing that they do in the draft executive order is they do point to statutes, but the statutes, they point to just don't work in this context.

So the first thing they do is they discuss a separate existing executive order

from 2018, that orders called imposing certain sanctions in the event of foreign interference in a United States election. And it declares a national emergency to deal with foreign interference in elections. And then it creates a process for imposing sanctions on individuals and governments who are found in a threat assessment by the DNI to have interfered.

And that EO used IEPA, the same statute that the president tried to use to impose his tariffs.

“And it actually makes sense in that context because IEPA is an economic powers statute”

and what they are doing in that executive order that Joe Biden extended, and that his administration eventually applied to Iran and Russia, is imposing sanctions.

But what the activists in this draft executive order seem to be doing is saying,

"Yep, you can still cite IEPA, but instead you take all these actions related to elections." And it doesn't really make any sense. I mean, it doesn't make any sense at all because IEPA has nothing to do with elections. But even if you try to get more into the nitty-gritty of it and say, "Are I what is the text of IEPA?"

mentioned, the closest thing you can find is that it does mention property belonging to foreign entities, and you could say, maybe that has to do with the voting machines and they would be trying to kind of repossessed voting machines. But then the voting machines would have to be not only foreign owned, they'd have to be owned by a foreign adversary who was determined to have interfered with elections.

So doesn't work. The draft executive order also mentions the Defense Production Act, and it mentions the federal information security modernization act. And either of these really works either, the latter is even stranger. First of all, it's not an emergency statute.

Second of all, its purpose is to make sure that federal agencies' critical systems are secure.

Doesn't have anything to do with federal agencies taking control from the states of systems. And also, the EO has tons of transparency provisions. That's kind of what we were talking about with the voter rolls, getting those from the states.

“But the EO also says, "The OJ, you need to provide access to the administrators of elections”

having to do with your criminal databases so that we can make sure that felons don't vote, stuff like that." And the order might actually violate federal information security modernization act with those, so it's funny that they invoke it. And then the Defense Production Act again doesn't work.

That has to do with mobilizing private industry toward national defense and emergency preparedness. Doesn't have anything to do with mobilizing the state systems around whatever you're trying to achieve. So that's the way more detail than you need or should want. But that's what they're trying to do to skirt this massive problem that the president doesn't know authority over elections. Their issue, again, is that they need a point to a statute.

There aren't any statutes that give the president authority over elections. So in this draft, the other just pointing to a bunch of sort of random statutes. It's not going to work. They don't have anything to do with elections. So you're actually making me feel better about this whole thing. We have a bunch of a weird menagerie of Anna's favorite cookie people.

They've all gotten together and they've written a piece of gibberish legally. Yeah. And if the president were to sign it, it would just as the last executive order faired badly in court. This one would fair worse. Because as you say, it's based on a legal theory that's, I'm a nonsense. So what is the real risk here? Yeah. It's a really good question.

So one risk, one big risk is just chaos. Right. One big risk is that the president issues this order. He issues it close to the election. And it's unclear to states whether they're supposed to comply. It's also possible that red states would go ahead and comply. Even though their laws haven't been properly adjusted to do this.

And also, if you try to enforce all of these requirements that close to the election,

again, chaos administrative chaos, like some of them are just impossible really to enforce and it could result in people's ballots not being counted or just doubt over the results in the end. Because, you know, he said you were supposed to do this. Maybe some states said that they were going to do this and then the results come through and what was followed, what was not followed, what was the law actually? This is by election deniers who spent, I don't know, continuing to spend

time and energy after 2020, seeing these false narratives about what happened in that election,

do we just have a repeat of that? So that's one thing. You know, another possibility is that

the White House doesn't listen to the courts. And what does that look like? Again, it's tough when it comes to trying to force states to or counties to conform to registration or ID

“requirements. If you want to do something like ensure that ballots are hand-counted, which is a big”

part of this EO or that mail-in ballots aren't tabulated, you'd probably need to send in some form of federal forces. So what would that look like and what would that mean having those federal forces on the ground when it comes to also just voters being intimidated from voting? And then I think the most troubling possibility is that the president could try to seize voting machines or ballots after the election and take in place saying, well, I issued this emergency order,

it wasn't followed and it should have been followed and in order to enforce it, I have to seize voting machines or ballots. So I mean that's not listening to the courts thing, which would be obviously like a five alarm fire for a ton of reasons. So Anna, what is your impression of the expectation of this group of people? Are they waiting for the president to sign this any day or do they are they waiting for the save act to fall apart and then the president will step in and

sign this or do they imagine it's going to be sliced and diced and incorporated into a white house draft as you've kind of trolled around this group of people, what do you have the impression

“that they're looking for here? I think it varies, but I mean like for example, Wano Savan, I think,”

is very convinced that like I mean he's been convinced for months that any day now Trump is going to sign this draft executive order and he has claimed at one point and this is I believe this is quoted in our piece. At one point in December on a podcast appearance, he claimed that what he's

been told is that 80 to 90 percent of what is in that 17 page draft executive order that's been circulating

is what will end up in Trump's eventual executive order that's based on that. Peter Tickton, meanwhile, when we spoke to him, he made the claim like one way or another, either whether it's before the election happens or after the election happens, there's going to be a national emergency declared. So they're at least with those folks and then also you can look at statements that people like Michael Flynn or Patrick Burn have made in which they've also urged a national emergency.

“I think they think one way or another eventually it's going to get to a point where”

where Trump is going to declare a national emergency and do something with elections related to that declaration, but I can't say with precision that there's an overwhelming view about, oh, like it's going to be after the CVACs, vocalapses and that kind of thing. All right, so let's imagine a nightmare scenario which is, you know, we're much closer to the election than we are now and the president issues something like this, details might vary, but something that

asserts broad power over elections in the immediate proximity to an election. How quickly do you think the courts could get their act together to enjoy net or to, you know, to do something about it? So I think fairly quickly depending on the judge. So those were challenging the E.O. would try to file with judges they thought as would be friendly to their motions and then they would probably, you can tell me whether you disagree, but it seems possible that they could get a ruling

and because the Supreme Court has this ban on nationwide injunction. So you probably have

equivalent motions all around the country and I mean unless this is over targeted to the 15 places in which we need to nationalize voting, which is what President Trump has said. Then the

“question would be how fast would this get to the Supreme Court and what would the Supreme Court do?”

So ideally the Supreme Court would say we need to move as fast as possible because this is so disruptive. It's so close to the election but there is a snag as my understanding, which is

something called the Purcell Principle. Purcell Principle is that the courts can't issue

rulings that change election rules when it's super close to an election. And so the question is how would the Supreme Court look at that with the Supreme Court say, oh, court shouldn't be changing the rules or is the fact that what's disruptive, what's changing the rules so close to the election, the executive order itself, something that would change that but you guys can chime in on whether you think anything about that is wrong or needs elaboration. I mean I don't even know how close they

could do like my question is just like it seems to me like this whole scheme would be practically like unworkable if they issue a two close to the election because it will just not be possible to implement some of the things that they want to do with this EO if you do it within 60 days

“of the election. Like at that point, like elections you have to do a lot of advanced work with like”

ordering the ballots and and programming the machines and doing all this stuff and like the way they want to do it would require all new because like they want to do hand mark paper ballots like they they want to have all these systems that are just like you would have to do it further than 60 days before the election right? Do you agree Molly? I do which is why I think the biggest threat is chaos right? I think it almost doesn't matter whether the court say hey you can't do this

because what are they saying hey you can't do that the administration or states would practically

“be able to do? So again I think that for a lot of it you really can't do it ahead of time although”

I do think the issue is if you claim that a bunch of voting machines that are being used are all of a sudden invalid and then de-certified then what does that mean? What does that mean for the votes that were cast? So you still need and want something from the court that says no actually we can count those votes right? So they're there a little bit to that where I think that it matters that the courts join in and then there are other bits where I think that I just don't know how you

would possibly achieve it meet that administrative burden so close to the election but I think that if you have states who day of are saying oh my gosh we don't know whether we can count these ballots then you want ideally a court ruling as soon as possible but tells them whether they can or can. We are going to leave it there and a bower Molly Roberts thank you both for joining us today. Thank you.

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