[ExI] Trump, in an Escalation, Calls for Republicans to ‘Nationalize’ Elections

[Adrian Tymes]

It's more the specific how than the general principle.  Notice that,
unlike those other countries, he is not (currently) proposing to
nationalize all US elections.  His intent with those "fifteen places"
is to prevent enough Democrats from being elected to retake control of
the House - in other words, to prevent his party from losing control
even if that would have been the result of free and fair elections, so
as to implement one-party rule in practice.

Libertarians are against government-enforced one-party rule, last I
heard, for reasons including that it allows governance to be decided
privately by a few people (party officials, most of whom are never
subject to election by the general public after one-party rule is
established) while ignoring the will of the majority.

The Republicans who are in favor of this consider the "proposed
powers" of being in power forever with no consequences should they
rule corruptly.  The "disaster" they refer to is from their
perspective: if they say "national disaster" about this, it's really
more "personal disaster".

On Tue, Feb 3, 2026 at 11:17 AM Darin Sunley via extropy-chat
<extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>
> The federal government manages elections in Canada, and basically every other country in the world.
> "If we proposed this, it would be awesome, but he wants it, so it's terrible" is doing a little too much work here.
>
> [Also "our proposed powers and legal infrastructure would be a national disaster if the other party was ever elected" is not the flex they think it is, and is really a fully general argument for principled libertarianism.]
>
>
>
> On Tue, Feb 3, 2026 at 3:59 AM John Clark via extropy-chat <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>>
>> Explore this gift article from The New York Times. You can read it for free without a subscription.
>>
>> Trump, in an Escalation, Calls for Republicans to ‘Nationalize’ Elections
>>
>> The comments, made on a conservative podcast, follow a string of moves from his administration to try to exert more control over American elections.
>>
>> https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/02/us/politics/trump-nationalize-elections.html?unlocked_article_code=1.JVA.en-q.1F5B4oljkawg&smid=em-share
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