Has any U.S. president ever attempted to delay a federal election?

1. A constitutional and legal firewall: Congress sets Election Day, not the president

Since 1845 Congress fixed the federal Election Day as the Tuesday after the first Monday in November, and legal scholars and the Congressional Research Service have concluded that there is no statutory or constitutional authority for a president to unilaterally postpone federal elections—only Congress could change the date, and even then the Twentieth Amendment and succession rules complicate any delay past an administration’s term limit ^{[6] [1] [7]}.

2. The United States has never delayed a presidential election in practice

U.S. history records no instance in which a presidential election was postponed; even during existential crises—such as the Civil War, the 1918 influenza pandemic, the Great Depression, and World War II—elections proceeded on schedule, a point emphasized by historians and compilations from National Geographic and History.com ^{[1] [2] [3]}.

3. Public suggestions versus formal attempts: when presidents floated the idea

What has changed in modern politics is rhetorical daring: President Donald Trump publicly suggested delaying the 2020 presidential election amid the COVID-19 pandemic and later made comments about cancelling or limiting elections in subsequent years, raising alarms among lawmakers and legal experts who noted he lacked the legal power to do so ^{[3] [4] [1]}. Those public proposals were rebuffed across the aisle and by legal commentary that framed them as unconstitutional and antithetical to democratic norms ^{[1] [6]}.

4. Indirect pressure, certification fights, and post-election maneuvers

While no president delayed Election Day, the period after the 2020 election saw concerted efforts by allies to disrupt certification and to keep an incumbent in office—pressures on state legislatures, lawsuits to block certification, and a campaign to have federal actors refuse to recognize results—which scholars and watchdogs described as attempts to delay or negate the transfer of power rather than a formal change in Election Day ^{[5] [8]}. Courts and election officials repeatedly rejected those efforts, and subsequent litigation showed limits on executive influence over state-run election procedures ^{[5] [9]}.

5. The practical and political limits on any presidential delay

Even if a president wanted to delay an election, legal, institutional, and political constraints are formidable: the Constitution’s term limits mean an administration ends on inauguration day unless a lawful succession or amendment occurs; Congress controls the timing of federal elections; states administer voting; and the judiciary has repeatedly blocked executive overreach into election administration—illustrated by court rulings that barred attempts to condition federal election funding on state compliance with presidential demands ^{[1] [6] [9]}.

6. Alternative perspectives and the stakes

Some politicians and commentators have argued that extraordinary emergencies might justify discussion of timing, but mainstream legal opinion and bipartisan political statements have treated presidential proposals to delay elections as illegitimate or unlawful, warning that such proposals can undermine trust in institutions and serve partisan self-interest—an implicit agenda critics attribute to incumbents who might benefit from postponement ^{[6] [8]}. Reporting and legal analysis converge on the point that preventing unilateral presidential postponement is a deliberate constitutional design to protect democratic continuity ^[1].

Limitations: reporting reviewed documents claims about public suggestions and legal judgments up to the cited articles; there is no sourced evidence in this set that any president formally enacted or lawfully effected a delay of a federal election, and this answer does not assess private deliberations that left no public record ^{[1] [3] [4]}.