Peter Ticktin — an 80-year-old Florida lawyer who describes himself as Donald Trump's boyhood best friend from their shared years at the New York Military Academy in the 1960s — has been quietly but persistently pushing the president to sign a sweeping 17-page draft executive order that would declare a national emergency and assert unprecedented federal control over the 2026 midterm elections, according to a detailed CNN investigation published July 6. The effort, which has circulated among Trump allies for months and was reviewed in full by PBS News, is built on unsubstantiated claims that foreign governments — specifically China, Russia, Venezuela, and Iran — have infiltrated American electronic voting machines and are plotting to steal enough congressional seats to impeach and remove both Trump and Vice President JD Vance from office so that House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries could ascend to the presidency from the speakership.
Ticktin has moved from the periphery of Trump's circle into a more visible role in election denial circles in recent months, fronting legal efforts for figures including Tina Peters — the former Colorado county clerk convicted of tampering with election equipment — who was released from prison in June after Trump personally pressured Colorado's Democratic Governor Jared Polis to commute her sentence. Ticktin accompanied Peters to the White House last week when Trump hosted her in the Oval Office, and a photograph of Ticktin posing with Trump in the Oval Office on June 30 appears to have been taken during that visit. A White House official downplayed the relationship, telling CNN that while Ticktin is "well-meaning," he appears to overstate his current access to Trump and "does not influence the White House's decisions."
What the 17-Page Draft Executive Order Actually Contains
The draft executive order Ticktin has been promoting is not a vague concept memo — it is a detailed working document that, if signed, would radically reshape how the 2026 midterms are administered. According to PBS News, which reviewed the full proposal, the order would authorize Trump to require hand-counting of all ballots nationwide, impose strict in-person voter identification requirements, and restrict or ban mail-in voting. It would also require all 211 million already-registered American voters to re-register in person at a government election office before the midterms — submitting documentary proof of citizenship via birth certificate, passport, or naturalization papers — effectively wiping the current voter rolls and forcing a mass re-registration under rules similar to those in the proposed SAVE Act and SAVE America Act. The legal hook Ticktin invokes for these powers is the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) — a statute designed for economic sanctions against foreign-controlled property that constitutional scholars say has no application to domestic election administration. For CNN's complete original investigation into Ticktin and the draft executive order, see the full story at CNN Politics.
Constitutional Experts: This Would Trigger a Crisis
State election officials and election law experts have been unambiguous in their assessment of what would happen if Trump signed such an order. Elizabeth Goitein, a national security law expert who has written extensively on emergency powers, pointed out the fundamental flaw in Ticktin's legal theory: "The IEEPA is mostly focused on economic sanctions. Nothing in that would allow for the seizure of voting machines owned and operated by state or local election authorities." That critique dovetails with a more basic constitutional objection that experts across the political spectrum have consistently raised. Under Article I, Section 4 of the US Constitution, power over the administration of elections is explicitly reserved to the states and to Congress — not to the president. No federal executive branch official has authority under the Constitution, statutes, or any other legal mechanism to unilaterally alter rules for how Americans cast or count their votes in federal elections.
The Center for American Progress noted that federal elections ran unimpeded by presidential intervention during the Civil War, both world wars, and throughout all recent military operations in the Middle East — including during the COVID-19 pandemic national emergency, when states — not the federal government — used their own authority to adjust election procedures and administer safe elections. The group concluded bluntly that declaring a national emergency to impose the provisions in Ticktin's draft order would "throw the midterm elections into chaos, make it harder for citizens to cast ballots, and lock in the Trump administration's political power."
Trump Has Publicly Distanced Himself — But the Pressure Campaign Continues
Trump has publicly denied he is considering the plan. On February 27, when first asked about the proposal by reporters, he responded: "Who told you that? No, I've never heard about it." More recently, Trump told reporters he would prefer Congress to pass voter ID legislation through the SAVE America Act rather than act unilaterally — a preference grounded partly in political reality, as federal courts have already declared unconstitutional Trump's March 2025 executive order that sought to curb mail-in voting, with judges blocking the US Postal Service from carrying out its provisions. Despite the public distancing, Ticktin told PBS in February that he had communicated directly with Trump about the proposal and had spoken with White House and Justice Department officials — though he declined to identify them. Ticktin told CNN: "We were very close. In fact, you could say we were best friends in our senior year of high school." He says he speaks with Trump several times a year.
A Pattern of Election-Related Litigation — and Judicial Rebuke
Ticktin's efforts to advance election-related litigation have a documented track record of judicial rebuke. In a 2022 civil lawsuit against Hillary Clinton — which he filed on Trump's behalf accusing Clinton of falsely tying Trump to Russia during his first presidential campaign — a federal judge threw out the suit and sanctioned Ticktin and other lawyers on Trump's legal team for making allegations "that were either knowingly false or made in reckless disregard for the truth." An appeals court upheld those sanctions. Despite this history, Ticktin continues to operate at the intersection of the election denial movement and Trump's legal orbit — a position that gives his national emergency proposal more visibility than it might otherwise receive.
The Broader Context: A Pattern of Attempted Election Nationalization
Ticktin's push does not exist in isolation. Since the beginning of Trump's second term, the administration has been on what critics describe as a multipronged effort to nationalize election administration despite lacking constitutional authority to do so. Trump publicly stated he wants to "take over" elections in multiple states. The administration has targeted billions in Department of Homeland Security grants to pressure states into adopting sweeping election changes aligned with White House preferences. The Trump DOJ has asked the Supreme Court to revive blocked voter purge rules ahead of the midterms. And the White House has reportedly sat on a voting machine security report rather than publishing it before November. Together, these developments have prompted alarm from election law experts and state officials across party lines — who warn that whether or not Ticktin's specific executive order ever lands on Trump's desk, the underlying drive to expand presidential control over American elections represents a genuinely unprecedented challenge to the constitutional order that has governed US elections for 250 years.