Many Americans are afraid of what the aftermath of the election could bring. Alongside familiar concerns about the country’s priorities, reflected in the candidates’ differing policy prescriptions, they worry that one of the candidates may refuse to accept the results as legitimate. With the memory of the violent January 6, 2021, insurrection at the Capitol still fresh, many voters fear that the peaceful transfer of power will again be under attack. Heightening these concerns is the likelihood that the election will be decided by a comparatively tiny number of votes in a few swing states—raising the possibility that state-level challenges could throw the integrity of the election into doubt.
Indeed, since 2020, the crucial role of the states in presidential elections has become a point of intense scrutiny. In one sense this is understandable: with its 50 different states, each with its own election rules and overseen by its own election officials, the U.S. electoral system is unlike that of nearly all other democracies; even most federations have centralized election commissions that set electoral rules for provinces to administer. Some have argued that this variation and decentralization could, in the event of another contested result, pose a danger to American democracy itself: indeed, many may fear that a single, partisan-controlled state could potentially try to thwart the election outcome. These anxieties have led to calls to centralize the rules, processes, and even the administration of elections.
But this view ignores the vital ways that states can also safeguard American democracy—including in a contested presidential election. The U.S. Constitution grants states wide latitude over areas of law and administration not explicitly accorded to the federal government: as of 2023, state and local jurisdictions had a total of 19 million employees relative to the federal government’s three million civilian employees; they also command the vast bulk of the country’s law enforcement resources, organize and oversee all elections, and retain the investigative and prosecutorial capacity to clear up election-related concerns. These prerogatives are a core feature of the United States, and because the states must coexist with a large federal government with formidable powers of its own, conflict over state authority has long been a major theme in U.S. history.
But precisely because of state powers, it is actually much harder for any candidate or party to steal a presidential election. Even if the outcome hinges on a single jurisdiction, those seeking to overturn the result would need to muster support from a variety of state and local governments, and these, in turn, could use their power to mount strenuous resistance to such efforts. In addition to simply upholding an independent election process, states could, in extreme circumstances, take further steps to obstruct a partisan effort to interfere with the election process, for example, by filing lawsuits, suspending cooperation with the federal government, or mobilizing local constituencies to oppose efforts to thwart democracy.
This does not mean that efforts to delegitimize the results of the election—or the possibility that antidemocratic forces may try to mount a sustained attack on the electoral system—should be taken lightly. As voters learned in early January of 2021, even when state public officials resist a partisan call to reverse election outcomes, a further vulnerability comes at the point of aggregation: in Congress, where the electoral votes are counted. But it does suggest that there are multiple ways that states can uphold democratic institutions, even in moments of extreme stress. As a crucial feature of U.S. democracy, this latent capacity could help constrain reckless attempts to undermine the mechanics of the election and the peaceful transfer of power.
Along with other powers granted to them, the states’ authority to hold and oversee elections did not come about by chance. It goes back to the origins of U.S. federalism in the eighteenth century. In The Federalist Papers, no. 45, James Madison wrote that “the powers reserved to the several States will extend to all the objects which, in the ordinary course of affairs, concern the lives, liberties, and properties of the people, and the internal order, improvement, and prosperity of the State.” As Madison saw it, the federal government’s primary role was limited to national security, conducting trade with foreign entities, and ensuring the free movement of goods and people between the states. The states, as the original political units on which the republic was built, retained control of the elections. More than two centuries later, this account of the state-federal balance continues to remain broadly true.
For the founders, allowing states to maintain a preponderance of power provided a “double security” against tyranny; if fragmentation of the national government was insufficient to prevent a tyrant, the resistance from the states would both enfeeble the would-be tyrant and, by sounding a cry of alarm, cause the public to turn away from the despot. The........