Trump’s Comments on Future Elections Should Terrify You

Fox News’s “Patriot of the Year” loves the United States so much that he wants to completely reshape it—starting with the country’s elections.

Speaking to a crowd he referred to as “friends” during the network’s sixth annual Fox Nation Patriot Awards Thursday night, President-elect Donald Trump signaled his full intentions to enact sweeping changes to the process by which the nation chooses its leaders.

“We’re going to do things that have been really needed for a long time. No, we are going to look at elections,” Trump said.

“We want to have paper ballots, one-day voting, voter ID, and proof of citizenship, a little thing like proof of citizen—” Trump continued before trailing off on a rant about voting laws in California, which, like many other states around the country, doesn’t require voters to show photo ID at the booth. Instead, the Golden State asks its denizens to register to vote with either their Social Security number, their driver license number, or their California ID number.

Trump, speaking after being named "Patriot of the Year" by Fox -- note the Fox "hard news" anchor in the crowd applauding him -- says "we are gonna do things that have been really needed for a long time. And we are gonna look at elections." pic.twitter.com/nc7RD1BLwm

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) December 6, 2024

Trump’s late-night ode to election fraud (despite having been relatively mum on the issue since winning his race in November) is a neon-emblazoned sign that his administration has no intention of dropping his 2020 voter fraud conspiracy—even if actual voter fraud is, statistically, a relative nonissue in U.S. elections.

A statewide audit out of Georgia, the epicenter of Trump’s baseless theory, revealed in September that just 20 noncitizens out of 8.2 million residents existed on the state’s voter roll. Out of those 20, only nine participated in elections years ago, before ID was required as a part of the voter verification process. The other 11 individuals were registered but never actually voted, according to Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger.

Critics argue that restrictions on the front end of the electoral process—such as one-day voting and requiring day-of voter ID—would minimize voter turnout and limit the democracy’s ability to represent its constituents. This would especially be true in high-density areas like the nation’s biggest cities, where those stipulations would significantly drain resources (i.e., the number of volunteers required) and require more time to process, potentially leading to delays.

Trump’s continued focus on the nativist nonissue belies the fact that it is, of course, already illegal and impossible for noncitizens to vote in U.S. elections, including in Georgia, where the individuals who fell through the cracks in the system accounted for just 0.00024390243902439 percent of the state’s voting population.

Meanwhile, Trump has said nothing about campaign finance reform, an electoral issue that has, over the last few decades, increasingly placed politicians in the pockets of major corporations and billionaire donors. Project 2025—which Trump briefly disavowed before his allies practically admitted postelection that it was the blueprint all along—has actually promoted the opposite, advocating that the incoming Trump administration loosen campaign finance laws, raise limits on campaign contributions, and oppose Federal Election Commission reforms that could help the agency enforce the laws regarding the country’s elections.

The Heritage Foundation, the far-right think tank behind Project 2025, has also urged Trump—a man who used his own campaign funds to foot his legal fees—to appoint FEC commissioners who won’t enforce the law.