Trump urged Republicans to 'take over' voting ahead of midterms

WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump urged Republicans on Monday to “take over” voting, in another escalation of his administration’s attempts to overhaul how elections are run ahead of the pivotal midterms.

In the United States, elections are administered by state authorities, not the federal government.

“The Republicans should say: ‘we want to take over, we should take over the voting,'” Trump told Dan Bongino, the former deputy director of the FBI, during a podcast appearance.

Trump said Republicans “ought to nationalize the voting” in 15 places, though he did not specify where.

During the interview with Bongino, Trump reiterated his false claim of having won the 2020 presidential election that he lost to Joe Biden.

The midterm elections set for November are shaping up to pose a challenge to the Republican majority in Congress as tough immigration police operations — which left two people dead in January in Minneapolis — are facing growing pushback, and the cost of living weighs on households.

The latest comments come just a week after the FBI carried out a search at an election center in Georgia, at the heart of unfounded fraud allegations during the 2020 presidential race.

Trump has also encouraged Republican-led states to redraw electoral maps to favor his party.

In what analysts have pointed to as evidence of voters’ growing disenchantment with the Republican Party, a Democratic candidate won a state Senate seat on Saturday in a traditionally Republican stronghold in Texas.

That followed a series of Democratic Party wins with New Jersey and Virginia electing Democratic governors last fall and left-wing Zohran Mamdani sweeping to power in New York City’s mayoral election in November.

Since taking office a year ago, Trump has taken several punitive measures against perceived enemies, purging government officials deemed to be disloyal, targeting law firms involved in past cases against him and pulling federal funding from universities.

Trump was indicted in 2023 by federal prosecutors and by the state of Georgia for illegal attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 election, won by Biden.

Those cases were dropped following his election in 2024 to a second term.