Donald Trump’s claim that he would invoke the Insurrection Act or declare a national emergency during the mid-terms is problematic for a number of reasons. In particular, the use of the Insurrection Act to establish a state of emergency at polling stations would be illegal for several reasons.
Firstly, the Insurrection Act allows a President to introduce federal troops into a state in the event of such things as insurrection, domestic violence, or unlawful assembly in which the federal government cannot carry out its constitutional duties through ordinary judicial means. None of those factors can be construed as a justification for suspending civilian authority at voting stations.
Secondly, federal law does not allow for the use of military personnel at polling stations. The Posse Comitatus Act forbids the use of the army as police. Additionally, according to Title 18 of the United States Code, Section 592, it is illegal to bring “any armed military or naval or civil officer or man into any election district for the purpose of guarding or protecting any electioneering individual or the property of such person.” By virtue of the aforementioned legislation, it is illegal to deploy federal soldiers or federal police to a polling station in order to intimidate voters. Such interference would be an abuse of presidential power and an unconstitutional overreach.
The election process in the U.S. is a decentralized one. According to the Constitution’s Tenth Amendment, “The powers not delegated to the United States… are reserved to the States respectively, and the people.” The regulation of the time, place, and manner of elections falls to the state and local authorities. A president does not have the authority to unilaterally impose his will on voters who use polling stations run by the states.
