(Gray News) - President Donald Trump is calling on Republicans to “nationalize” voting in future elections.

The Constitution states that elections are run by state and local officials. The federal government plays only a small role.

In an interview that aired Monday, Trump told former FBI deputy director Dan Bongino that Republicans should “take over the voting” in at least 15 places.

Trump repeated claims that he won states where official totals showed he lost, calling those states “crooked.”

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Tuesday that Trump was referring to the Save Act, a proposal that would require proof of U.S. citizenship to vote.

“He [Trump] spoke with the speaker directly about that yesterday about the need to get that bill on the floor for a vote, because it provides very common sense measures for voting in our country, such as voter ID,” she said.

Leavitt said Trump understands the Constitution does not allow the federal government to take over an election.

“The president believes in the United States Constitution, however, he believes there has obviously been a lot of fraud and irregularities that have taken place in American elections,” she said.

The comments come a week after the FBI searched an elections office in Fulton County, Georgia. That search is related to a Justice Department effort to seize election records and search for alleged voter fraud in the county.

Georgia has been at the center of Trump’s baseless claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him.

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