Trump lost in 2020. Crying “fraud” only because his damaged psyche couldn’t face losing. Not a single Biden ballot was ever proven invalid. The real attempt to steal the election was Trump’s own.
Yet ever since, he’s continued to bang on about election fraud — a dishonest pretext for measures to keep Democrats from voting. All blatantly unconstitutional, since voting procedures are an exclusive state responsibility. Trump’s biggest ploy is the “SAVE” act, to require voters to present proof of citizenship and photo ID. A fix for a nonexistent problem, since voter impersonation and non-citizen voting are vanishingly rare. But the legislation would disenfranchise many millions who couldn’t come up with such documents. Fortunately this bill is dead in the Senate.
But Trump’s been trying other gambits. Recently an order barring the Postal Service from delivering mail ballots to anyone not on a citizenship list (which doesn’t even exist yet). This too clearly illegal.
While all such mischief is likely to fail, there may still be serious interference with the coming midterm elections. He might try blocking them altogether with some sort of emergency declaration. Also unlawful of course. Or messing with vote counting in close races. Even trying to seize ballots, which would muddy the waters and make post-election tampering impossible to rule out.
I haven’t even mentioned gerrymandering. An old tradition — every ten years. However, Trump’s push to violate the ten year rule is another unprecedented assault on our elections.
But perhaps the biggest and likeliest threat is deploying ICE agents to voting sites. Sending them to airports may have been a dry run. This would again be based on the false bugaboo of non-citizens voting. The real aim would be intimidation.
ICE violence in places like Minneapolis has scared non-white and Hispanic citizens from venturing out; those lawless thugs at the polls could keep frightened voters at home. (Though it might inspire more people to cast votes that protest such awfulness.)
Even if the Republicans are prevented from actually stealing any 2026 elections, or winning some by underhanded tactics, the whole disgraceful picture still undermines our democracy in two big ways. First, it corrodes people’s confidence that elections are free and fair. Moved by the “where there’s smoke there’s fire” theory. Trump and Republicans have certainly spewed a lot of smoke about election fraud.
They have also shattered a fundamental precept for how a democracy has to work. Namely, accepting the legitimacy of rival participants, with election losers graciously ceding to the winners. This was honored in America for 232 years. Until Trump — who tried to overthrow the 2020 election, first through chicanery (fake electors, etc), and then violence.
That Americans, after this, elected him again, showed our culture of democracy to be deeply broken.
