OPINION:
Washington is headed toward a constitutional collision over who controls America’s elections.
Congress is stalling voter verification reforms. Federal judges are blocking executive enforcement directives, and the Justice Department is under partisan attack for attempting to enforce existing law.
What began as a policy debate has become a separation-of-powers fight over who writes the rules of federal elections and who enforces them.
This collision inevitably drags 2020 back into the center of the debate, including the findings of “The Navarro Report,” which President Trump cited in pressing for further investigation of disputed ballots before the events of Jan. 6, 2021.
Drawing on affidavits, court filings, contemporaneous reporting and documented rule changes, “The Navarro Report” compiles the legal disputes, administrative decisions and statistical anomalies that defined the 2020 election cycle.
Americans have seen this movie before. The 1960 Kennedy-Nixon race was shadowed by credible allegations of fraud in Illinois and Texas. Richard Nixon and the country chose closure over clarity, but the doubts linger to this day. A definitive investigation then might have strengthened public confidence now.
“The Navarro Report” presents a similar systemic failure: When ballot volume expands while verification standards weaken, political operatives can alter the outcome of a close election.
A central insight of the report is that national elections are not decided at the national level. They are decided locally, in key battleground states where the difference between a Democrat or a Republican in the White House can come down to a few thousand votes.
The core safeguard for in-person voting is identity verification at check-in, often including photo ID, as the SAVE Act would require nationwide for federal registration. For absentee ballots, the principal safeguard is envelope verification, especially signature matching.
Among the 2020 battleground states, Georgia is the clearest case study in how Democrats weakened signature verification. In March 2020, Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger entered into a settlement resolving litigation brought by the Democratic Party of Georgia that rewrote signature-review procedures statewide, just as Democrats were shifting massively to absentee voting.
In 2016, Georgia rejected nearly 7% of absentee ballots. In 2020, that rejection rate collapsed to a fraction of 1%. Absentee ballots broke roughly 2-1 in favor of Democrats. Joseph R. Biden’s certified margin was about 12,000 votes. If anything close to the prior rejection rate had remained in place, then the volume of rejected absentee ballots would have dwarfed Mr. Biden’s margin of victory.
Across other battleground states, the pattern was similar: mass expansion of mail-in voting coupled with weakened or contested verification controls.
In Arizona, disputes centered on the rapid expansion and placement of drop boxes, especially in Maricopa County, as well as on supervision and chain-of-custody procedures.
In Wisconsin, the COVID-19 surge in “indefinitely confined” claims dramatically expanded absentee voting without the state’s usual photo-ID verification at the polls.
In Pennsylvania, courts and executive officials altered deadlines, enforcement standards and “naked ballot” requirements, departing from procedures enacted by the legislature under the Constitution’s elections clause.
In Michigan, chain-of-custody controls and observer access during ballot counting, particularly in Detroit, became flash points, with disputes over whether meaningful oversight was permitted.
Critics point to audits and recounts that found “no wrongdoing,” but those were counting exercises, not verification exercises. They confirmed tabulation accuracy, not ballot eligibility or compliance with statutory safeguards.
When Mr. Trump protested, the legacy media dismissed his claims as “debunked” without truly engaging the data. Courts declined to hear cases on procedural grounds rather than on the merits. Big Tech platforms throttled or blocked dissenting analysis.
The goal was not to analyze whether the election had been stolen, as “The Navarro Report” did, but to turn anyone who dared try into an “election denier.”
That framing is backward. Election integrity is not a conspiracy theory; it is a systems question. When you remove controls, you increase risk. When you weaken verification, you invite abuse. When you prevent meaningful audits, you destroy public confidence.
In 1960, the country chose closure over clarity. In 2020, our courts and institutions chose speed over scrutiny. The cost has been measurable: More than 40% of Americans now lack confidence in presidential vote counting.
A serious accounting of the 2020 election would strengthen the republic. Mr. Trump is the only national leader willing to insist on it. His push for voter identification, restored signature verification and consistent enforcement is not backward-looking. It is the only credible path to restoring confidence in the ballot.
• Peter Navarro is the White House senior counselor for trade and manufacturing.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.