Day: January 14, 2026

𝗪𝗵𝘆 𝗮 𝗨.𝗦. 𝗣𝗿𝗲𝘀𝗶𝗱𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗖𝗮𝗻𝗻𝗼𝘁 𝗖𝗮𝗻𝗰𝗲𝗹 𝗘𝗹𝗲𝗰𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝘀

Admin: This is a short primer on how U.S. elections work, contrasted with parliamentary systems elsewhere. It is part of an ongoing series aimed at lowering the temperature around the Greenland narrative and removing space for Kremlin-aligned framing.

The piece will also attempt to correct what I view as a persistent confusion in Europe, and among a surprising number of Americans, about how U.S. elections actually function. Much of the European misreading, IMHO, comes from instinctively mapping American politics onto parliamentary systems, where elections are administered centrally and governments can collapse or reset through legislative action. Much of the confusion among Americans, IMHO, comes from aggressive and sustained narrative manipulation that floods the MAGA information space. I could spend three paragraphs softening that last sentence but I won’t since it speaks truth without excuses and I am my own editor. The key point and takeaway of this piece is to reinforce that the U.S. model for presidential elections is built to avoid a concentration of power at the executive level.

__________

𝗛𝗼𝘄 𝗨.𝗦. 𝗘𝗹𝗲𝗰𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝘀 𝗪𝗼𝗿𝗸

In the United States, elections are not run from Washington. The federal government does not administer them and the White House does not direct them. Each state controls its own process under its own laws. That includes who can vote, how ballots are designed, where polling takes place, how votes are counted, and how results are certified. This authority is constitutional, does not originate in the executive branch and does not require presidential consent.

Once votes are counted, state officials certify the results. That work is done by governors, secretaries of state, and state canvassing authorities. The president is not part of that chain and cannot intervene. If a state certifies, that decision stands unless it is challenged and overturned in that state’s courts or, in rare cases, the Supreme Court.

For presidential elections, the process then moves to Congress. States transmit their lists of certified electors and, in January, Congress meets in joint session to count the Electoral College votes. The vice president presides in a procedural role. The president is not involved. He has no authority in the room and no mechanism to affect the outcome.

Some people also argue that a president could declare martial law and use that as a basis to suspend or cancel elections. Martial law is not a constitutional trigger for cancelling elections and it does not transfer election authority to the executive branch. It does not override state control and it does not displace Congress. The United States held national elections during the Civil War, during World War I, and during World War II. Even with the country under direct threat and millions deployed overseas, the electoral calendar did not stop. There is no historical precedent and no legal pathway for martial law to be used as an election kill switch.

This process is the direct result of intentional design by the Constitution’s framers in the wake of the Revolutionary War. It is a distributed system specifically meant to prevent the United States from returning to a country ruled by a central figurehead such as a king with absolute authority. As a result, power over elections in 2026 is spread across fifty states, thousands of counties, independent courts, and a separate legislature. There is no single control point and no single node of failure. The system cannot be shut down from the top because it was never designed to be controlled from the top. Elections in the U.S. are run under one of the safest systems, in terms of protecting democratic I republican governance, in the world.

In summary: A U.S. president does not set election dates, does not administer voting, does not certify results, and does not count electoral votes. He does not approve outcomes and he does not have authority to invalidate them. No emergency provision, national security clause, or executive order can override this structure. Elections in the U.S. are run under one of the safest systems, in terms of protecting democratic/republican governance, in the world. This design is deliberate and has served the U.S. well, despite rhetoric to sow confusion, for 250-years. The United States is the oldest continuous democracy in the world by design, built on a separation of power that runs from the presidency to Congress, from the states to the counties, through the courts, and ultimately to the people.

#OSINT

— OSINT Intuit™ (@UKikaski) Jan 14, 2026

Прокурор потребовал назначить 18 лет колонии общего режима жительнице Тольятти Полине Евтушенко, сообщила SOTA. По версии следствия, Евтушенко якобы призывала ко вступлению в легион “Свобода России” – добровольческое подразделение, воюющее на стороне Украины
smarturl.click/6W6RY

— Радио Свобода (@SvobodaRadio) Jan 14, 2026