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Some archaic spelling notwithstanding, the clause couldn’t be clearer about state and congressional control over America’s electoral process. What’s missing? Any reference at all to presidential power in this arena. Constitutionally, there isn’t any.

Try and square that with the latest from President Donald Trump. His ignorance about and contempt for the founding document he has sworn to uphold was well-established well before now — but perhaps never this starkly.

“States are merely an ‘agent’ for the Federal Government in counting and tabulating the votes,� Trump declared this week on his platform. “They must do what the Federal Government, as represented by the President of the United States, tells them, FOR THE GOOD OF OUR COUNTRY, to do.�

Really? Hmm, we can’t seem to find that language in here. Maybe it’s in Clause 2?

If there’s anything still resembling constitutional fealty in America’s judicial system — and most indications there are encouraging — Trump’s threat to restructure America’s entire electoral landscape via executive fiat won’t get past its first court hearing. It’s unconstitutional on its face. Period.

The danger is that this bovine Congress, which actually does have some constitutional sway on this issue, might be inclined to do Trump’s bidding on this, as they too often have before. It’s why regular Americans must make clear to those members of Congress that it would be unacceptable.

Trump’s anti-constitutional, anti-factual rant was designed to bolster his current attempt to unilaterally outlaw mail-in voting nationwide.

In further support, he has claimed, falsely, that the U.S. is the only country in the world to allow . In fairness, maybe he meant, we’re the only country to allow it except for 33 others, including the United Kingdom, Germany, Canada and Australia.

Trump’s latest tirade rests on yet another falsehood: That mail-in voting systems are rife with fraud and abuse. He cites no evidence of this — because there isn’t any.

Ditto with his related tirade against machine voting. Contrary to Trump’s typically upside-down version of reality, machine voting is actually more accurate and less prone to fraud than paper ballots, according to exhaustive analyses by , the for Justice and others.

This obsession with restricting voting before next year’s midterm elections is part of Trump’s broader project: avoiding the common fate of incumbent presidents, whose party historically tends to lose ground in Congress in the midterms.

All presidents have tried to do what they constitutionally can to avoid that fate, of course. But this is the first one who has tried to do it by falsely claiming unilateral power to change state voting laws. It follows his hounding of red states to re-gerrymander their congressional districts mid-decade — as opposed to the bad-enough gerrymandering that already happens (in both parties) after each census.

Trump has already gotten Texas Republicans to betray democracy in their state with that unprecedented stunt; he’s leaning on Missouri and others as well. Blue-state California is responding in kind, opening the kind of damaging redistricting arms race that anyone could have predicted (and did).

If there’s a silver lining in all of this, it’s that it could, electorally speaking, blow up in Trump’s face.

Gerrymandering isn’t the exact science that its practitioners often presume it to be; redrawing congressional boundaries to create new Republican-held districts might easily usher in the unintended consequence of weakening the party’s hold of other, previously safe districts.

Similarly, the mail-in voting system that Trump falsely claims is corrupt was crucial to his own electoral victory last November. If he could declare, Only Republicans get to mail in their ballots, he undoubtedly would. (At this point, nothing would surprise us.) But short of that, he might find he’s hurting ballot access for his own supporters.

As real as those possibilities are, no one should count on that to protect America’s electoral systems from this frontal attack by a would-be autocrat.

The courts may slow Trump down but Congress remains the only real backstop. Contact your U.S. senator and House member at and and tell them that elections are the purview of states — and that Trump needs to keep his authoritarian-minded nose out of them.