"The Constitution does give Congress broad power to "make or alter" regulations about the time, place, and manner of elections. But at the same time, states were given primary control over elections and Congress was denied the power to determine voter qualifications. That's because the Framers did not think election administration should be solely a federal endeavor. They sought to divide responsibility between the states and the federal government, to avoid the dangers of both federal military dictatorship and state hyper-partisanship."
"In drafting the elections clause in 1787, the Founders at the Constitutional Convention attempted to balance their distrust of state legislatures as the source of partisan factions with their desire to maintain state control over voting qualifications. "The Legislatures of the States ought not to have the uncontrolled right of regulating the times places & manner of holding elections," James Madison explained in a debate, according to notes taken at the time."
President Trump called for the Republican Party to nationalize voting and asserted that states are agents of the federal government in elections. The Constitution grants Congress broad power to "make or alter" time, place, and manner regulations but assigns primary control over elections to the states and prohibits Congress from determining voter qualifications. The Framers sought a division of responsibility to prevent both federal military dictatorship and state hyper-partisanship. Historical experience and Supreme Court precedent have supported this balance and shown skepticism toward broad nationalization of elections. Attempts to centralize election administration face constitutional limits rooted in the original design.
Read at The Atlantic
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