‘We want to change it all’: Trump threatens to change elections and voting rights

Well, here it is—President-elect Donald Trump is preparing to deliver on his promise of overturning the U.S. election system as we know it, and it will happen sooner rather than later if his latest remarks are anything to go by.

Trump’s second term in office is already shaping up to be disastrous for millions of Americans, particularly immigrants, trans folks, women, and people of color. But if he’s successful in pulling off what might be his most extreme mandate yet, every American is at risk of losing one of their fundamental rights: the right to vote. After all, why should Trump abide by the U.S. Constitution when he’s got a slew of MAGA extremists and billionaire donors to bootlick?

Trump teases proof of citizenship requirements, tighter restrictions on voting

Yesterday, Trump was honored at an event in Long Island hosted by, predictably, Fox Nation. While accepting the “Patriot of the Year” award—clearly, this word means something different to the folks at Fox News—Trump announced his ambitious plans for U.S. election reform. And for supposedly being the party of non-restriction, Republicans sure seem eager to make voting a lot harder for millions of Americans.

“We’re gonna do things that have been really needed for a long time,” said Trump, as reported by Newsweek.“And we are gonna look at elections. We want to have paper ballots, one-day voting, voter ID, and proof of citizenship.” His comments are especially rich just after Election Day, during which he encouraged his supporters to vote early, despite his long and storied history of raging against mail-in ballots (which he blamed his 2020 loss on, FYI).

Trump went on to add, “In California, they just passed a law that you’re not even allowed to ask a voter for voter ID. Think of that. If you ask a voter for their voter ID, you’ve committed a crime. We’re gonna get the whole country straightened out,” echoing previous remarks he made during his 2024 presidential run in which he targeted mail-in voting and rallied for “citizenship papers” to be required at polls.

Trump’s voting reform plan only benefits himself—and the GOP

Again, Trump’s radical stance on U.S. elections is chock-full of hypocrisy. We’ve already seen him flip-flopping on his views on early voting and voting by mail—which he seems perfectly in favor of only when it benefits him. Putting the obvious discrepancies in his plan to restrict Americans’ access to voting aside, it’s important to look at who Trump’s potential policy affects most: people of color, immigrants, and low-income folks who might not have the means to attain a government-issued ID. Oh yeah, and it just so happens that these voters tend to skew left, making Trump’s plan all the more shifty.

Let’s be very clear: protecting voting rights should be a top priority for any representative of the U.S. government, never mind the president himself. Several Constitutional Amendments exist solely to challenge discriminatory voting practices, but, thanks to an ever-skeptical Supreme Court and a congress that’s about to be majority Republican, our voting rights are under attack.

Racist, sexist, and classist rhetoric has always surrounded the question of who should be able to vote in this country; if he’s successful in his plan to reshape U.S. elections, this could be Trump’s sneaky way of making sure he stays in power long after his term is up. First, it’ll be the 14th and 15th Amendments, and the next thing we know, it’ll be the 22nd. Either way, we’re about to see an uptick in tighter Voter ID laws, and it’ll only work to keep Trump and his pals on top. So this is how democracy dies …