Managing Democracy

We are just a few days away from Labor Day and the unofficial start of the election season. The (sometimes bitter) primary battles are over and (hopefully) all Democrats can rally behind the candidates that their fellow party members have chosen. If we believe the current polls (though there is little reason to based on their recent performance and how far away from the actual election we are), Democrats are poised to take the House and have a breakeven chance of winning the Senate. In many ways, this looks like a typical mid-term election for a party that controls both the White House and Congress, with the out-party making significant gains. However, there is nothing normal about these November elections.

This will be the first election of our lifetimes under a dictatorship, admittedly a very weak one, but a dictatorship nonetheless. Today, as decreed by the Supreme Court, the President is largely above the law. The enormous legal powers of the executive branch respond primarily to his whims and not the rule of law per se. Those powers are now used to target, intimidate, and silence the President’s opponents in the press, in politics, and even in the judiciary. The President has usurped the powers of Congress and the courts, with the abdication and/or complicity of both.  He has deployed a large, well-funded, rogue paramilitary force which randomly terrorizes communities and rounds a designated quota of people regardless of whether they are documented, undocumented, or even American citizens. Finally, the President regularly commits serious crimes brazenly and with impunity, both at home and abroad.

These, then, are the unique conditions under which November’s election will be contested, raising questions about the potential for significant electoral interference by the administration. Fortunately, the American electoral system is highly decentralized so that actually rigging the vote is nearly impossible. The vast majority of voters will be able to cast their vote freely and fairly, primarily in races where the winner is already known due to gerrymandering and voting patterns. But we severely underestimate just how far Republicans and Trump will be willing to go to interfere with voting, manipulate the totals, or even invalidate the results when it comes to this election. This will be especially true in races that may affect control of the Senate before and during the vote. And what happens after your vote is cast is where there are even more chances for a more generalized effort at disruption and interference, especially if the results indicate a massive defeat for Republicans and, by proxy, Trump.

Trump’s ego has driven him to make himself the centerpiece of this campaign with his “midterm convention”. Mike Johnson, who takes his orders from the White House, has openly stated that this election will be a referendum on Trump. Faced with potential defeat, Trump may pretend to distance himself from the Republican candidates but, at his core, he is incapable of accepting any kind of loss. And the people who do his bidding know the crimes they have committed on his behalf and the danger that a Democratic controlled Congress presents to them. Trump’s mental instability is increasing, and it is difficult to know just how much he is being manipulated and by whom within his relatively close circle. We’ve already seen the extremes he and his cronies in the Republican party will go to in the post-election period of 2020, eventually leading to an insurrection.

The early signs of the lengths Trump and his Republican cronies will go to are already extremely concerning, to use a phrase. Despite the constitution vesting control over elections to the states, the administration has striven to put together a national voter registry that would be the ultimate arbiter of eligible voters. The attempts to eliminate birthright citizenship, to use the USPS to refuse to deliver certain mail-in ballots, and to pass the SAVE Act were all intended to not just massively disenfranchise primarily Democratic voters but, more importantly, to render any new election results as unreliable and contestable. Efforts on all those fronts have been rebuffed for the moment, but the Republican attempts to implement them before the election will be ongoing.

We are already seeing the closing of poll stations in primarily Democratic areas and the purging of voter rolls, also often targeting Democratic voters, but on a scale larger than usual. We can also expect an extensive disinformation campaign about polling locations and voting requirements in heavily Democratic areas, again focused on competitive races. As the election get closer, we can expect Trump to make ever increasing and ever ludicrous claims of voter fraud and illegal immigrant voting. A recent report put out by DHS claimed around a quarter of a million of illegal immigrants were registered to vote but, unsurprisingly, the details don’t match up with the actual voter records in the individual states.

Incredibly, DOJ election monitors have been accused by the Republican governor of Wyoming of interfering with election workers, attempting to interview voters, and trying to access voting machines in the recent primary held there. This is Wyoming! and simply a primary!  If the administration is willing to go that far in such an insignificant election, imagine what might be on the table when it is facing a massive defeat. It has already seized cast ballots in its efforts to “prove” voter fraud in Georgia in the 2020 election. Trump has already mused about declaring a national emergency in order to seize ballots either before or after the votes have been counted. The fact that the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff recently felt compelled to put out a statement that there are no plans to deploy troops to polling sites only indicates that it actually exists as a real possibility. Hegseth has gutted the command of the Army which is the logical arm of the military to use if one were to deploy troops to the polls, seize voting machines, or “enforce” a trumped-up national emergency.

We can be assured that some local GOP election officials will refuse to certify the votes in certain areas where Democrats have produced an upset. The pressure on certain state Governors and Secretaries of State to do the same will also be enormous. Democratic election officials may also be targeted, with the administration suggesting election officials could be charged with abetting fraud. There is also the possibility that the GOP will offer mass objections to the seating of Democratic members of the House and Senate come January 2027 based on specious claims of fraud that Trump and the right-wing media would have been propagandizing for the prior few months.

While Democratic Secretaries of State and legal advisers like the Elias Law Group are prepared to mount legal challenges to any and all of these Republican attempts at election interference, the Democratic political class refuses to do the work to prepare not only its supporters but also the general public about the potential dangers that lie ahead. History has shown that the most successful method for blocking a stolen election is via mass protests, but it is unclear that the senior Democratic leadership is capable of leading such an effort. Instead, Democrats seem to want to pretend that these midterms will proceed as normal and that any disputes will be resolved through the legal process. That seems like an enormous gamble considering the corruption and complicity of the Supreme Court, but even more so because the President has shown repeatedly that the reality on the ground trumps the legal system – the Epstein files, the East Wing, the cherry trees, etc. Once the chain of custody of ballots is broken, the outcome will always be able to be cast in doubt.

Whatever happens this November, this will be the least free and fair election in this country since the actual implementation of the Civil and Voting Rights Acts in the late 1960s and the end of Jim Crow. If the 2026 vote is corrupted or discredited, our democratic rights will be gone. If it is not, it will still be critical to realize that every effort that Trump and the Republicans used to try and interfere, discredit, and invalidate the vote this year is merely a dry run for the real battle in 2028.