Berkeley Law dean: No president has undermined elections the way Donald Trump has
The efforts by the Trump administration to interfere with the November elections have no precedent in American history and must be understood as a concerted campaign to undermine the results if they, as expected, are disastrous for Republicans.
Under the Constitution, elections are conducted at the state level. The federal government has a very limited role, such as preventing race discrimination in voting under the authority of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. But there is no legal authority for what the Trump administration is trying to do, and the federal courts consistently have said so. Undaunted, the Trump administration is accelerating its efforts, including by filing frivolous lawsuits.
In March 2025, President Donald Trump issued an executive order requiring that state governments verify citizenship in registering people to vote. A federal court quickly ruled that the President has no authority to impose this requirement.
The Trump Justice Department filed lawsuits across the country to require states to turn their voter lists over to the federal government. The Trump administration lost every one of these cases, an embarrassing record of zero for 26.
Trump directed the United States Postal Service to adopt rules limiting the absentee ballots that it would deliver. A federal court invalidated the regulations, holding that the Postal Service had no legal authority to regulate absentee ballots. The Supreme Court agreed.
But the Trump drumbeat about voting fraud continues despite the lack of any evidence to support. Many studies have been done and all conclude that voting by non-citizens is exceedingly rare.
Nonetheless, the Trump administration sent a letter to California voting officials asserting that it had identified 20,000 people whose ballots should be separated from other ballots and not counted. No one knows how the administration compiled the list. More importantly, the federal government has no legal authority to require California to take these steps.
When California officials rightly refused, the Justice Department sued the state. U.S. District Judge David Carter, based in Orange County, was assigned the case and scheduled a hearing for Oct. 27. The department demanded a ruling by a deadline of its own choosing, then appealed to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals when Carter did not meet it. In my many years as a lawyer, I have never seen litigants impose a deadline on a judge. Surprisingly, the appeals court heard oral arguments on this frivolous appeal on Sunday, Oct. 25, though by all accounts the judges seemed skeptical of the administration’s position.
“On Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected an emergency petition by the Justice Department seeking to force California to separate ballots cast by 20,000 people the department says may be noncitizens illegally registered to vote. Last week, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals twice rejected the same request. U.S. District Judge David Carter also rejected the request, saying it was unprecedented and amounted to meddling in California’s election,” reported The Sacramento Bee.
Separately, the Justice Department arrested 28 people it said were noncitizens who had illegally registered to vote. It is unclear how they were identified or what evidence supported the allegations. U.S. District Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín in Oakland blocked the Department of Homeland Security from “conducting elections-related field operations and field interviews in California, Connecticut, Georgia, Missouri, Nevada, New York, Pennsylvania, Washington, and Wisconsin.” Meanwhile, a lawsuit filed in Washington, D.C., seeks to stop arrests based on the flimsiest allegations of illegality.
Perhaps the most ludicrous Trump action was a lawsuit filed on Oct. 22 in Alaska to prevent the Democratic candidate for the Senate, Mary Peltola, from being declared the winner in the event that she prevails on Election Day. Sen. Dan S. Sullivan’s effort at reelection is being challenged by Peltola and also by Dan J. Sullivan. In June, the Alaska Supreme Court ruled that both Sullivans should appear on the ballot. But the Trump administration says that it will contest the outcome if Peltola wins. A lawsuit challenging an election before it occurs is absurd, as is the claim that the results will be suspect only if the Democrat wins.
But what is clear is that the Trump administration is not filing lawsuits to win, but rather to generate publicity. It is to allow Trump to challenge the results of the elections if they do not come out the way he wants. It is to sow distrust in our election system.
Trump continues to claim that he won the 2020 presidential election despite losing by six million votes and there being zero evidence to support his assertions of fraud. Every court to rule on his election-fraud claims found no basis for his assertion that the election was stolen from him.
The courts must continue to stop the Trump efforts to undermine the November elections. And hopefully the people will turn out in large numbers and by their votes make clear how a democracy should work.
Erwin Chemerinsky is dean and professor of law at the UC Berkeley School of Law. Miles Mogulescu is a writer, entertainment producer and lawyer.
This story was originally published November 3, 2026 at 5:55 PM with the headline "Berkeley Law dean: No president has undermined elections the way Donald Trump has."
