Matt Cohen, senior reporter

A coalition of anti-voting activists is said to be coordinating with the White House to urge Trump to declare a national emergency and sign an executive order that would allow him to wrest control of voting from the states. That sounds alarming — and it is. But Democracy Docket obtained a legal memo claiming to justify the order, as well as an older version of the order itself. And, well, let’s just say the legal arguments are dubious at best.

• The updated version of the order reportedly cites a conspiracy theory that China interfered with the 2020 election as the basis for a national emergency. It would allow Trump to unilaterally ban mail-in ballots and voting machines on the basis that they are susceptible to foreign interference.
  
  
• One of the main activists pushing Trump to take over voting is Peter Ticktin, the lawyer for Tina Peters. Ticktin said that Trump could use the National Emergencies Act and the International Emergency Economic Powers Act to take over voting — an argument that legal experts scoffed at.
  
  
• Ticktin reportedly had an unnamed client at a recent summit of prominent election deniers and anti-voting activists — Cleta Mitchell and former Trump national security advisor Michael Flynn were there too — that was also attended by some prominent members of the Trump administration. Activists similarly pitched Trump admin officials on ways for the president to take control of voting.
  
  
• Also in attendance at this gathering, it’s worth noting: The British far-right, anti-Islam activist Tommy Robinson.

Longtime Democracy Docket readers might recognize the Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF) — the right-wing legal group that has a long track record of pushing for voter roll purges. Recently, PILF asked the U.S. Supreme Court to reinterpret aspects of the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA), a federal law that aimed to expand voting access as, instead, a mandate for aggressive voter purges. SCOTUS declined. 

• A key provision of the NVRA requires states to make “reasonable” efforts to maintain accurate voter rolls. But PILF has long sought to tighten the definition of “reasonable” in the NVRA’s language, and argued in a petition to SCOTUS that it requires far more aggressive removals than states already do.
  
  
• In a different petition to SCOTUS, PILF also wanted to make it easier for groups to have standing to sue states for access to their voter rolls. SCOTUS also declined to take up the case.
  
  
• While both moves were wins for voting rights (and blows to the group), PILF’s efforts to weaken the NVRA aren’t limited to the courts. Last year, the group’s president, J. Christian Adams, testified before Congress and urged lawmakers to pass legislation that requires states to take more aggressive measures in maintaining accurate voter rolls.