Trump is paving the way for the worst-case election-tampering in 2026

Republican presidential nominee and former U.S. President Donald Trump attends a campaign event in Gastonia, North Carolina, U.S. November 2, 2024. REUTERS/Megan Varner

Two government lawyers under Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama write in The Economist that President Donald Trump has been signaling he may use the powers of the presidency to challenge the results of the 2026 midterm elections if they are not to his liking.

Jack Goldsmith and Bob Bauer say that while " the House race thus offers Democrats their best shot at putting some brakes on the Trump juggernaut," the president has been "actively stoking" public mistrust in the electoral process and that could pose a problem again next November.

"More ominously, under the banner of defending 'honest elections', he appears to be laying the groundwork to challenge and possibly manipulate them," they write.

"His words and actions strongly suggest he may use the formidable powers of the presidency — and possibly even the armed forces — to resist 2026 electoral results he dislikes," they add.

Trump, they write, has framed any of his electoral losses as "proof of opponents' fraud," pointing to his exhaustive efforts to overthrow his loss to President Joe Biden in the 2020 election.

"His charges have weakened the once-bipartisan consensus that election administration should be insulated from politics," they write.

The authors say to expect both the Republican and Democratic parties to mount legal challenges in races they seem to be losing "by alleging error, fraud or other irregularities, demanding recounts and contesting results in the courts," but they say these "struggles could enter a whole new dimension owing to Mr Trump’s apparent readiness to use the redoubtable powers of the presidency to deny election results."

This must be taken very seriously, they write, especially considering the "heretical idea" Trump himself posed on Truth Social in which he said that states "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."

This, they note, "flies in the face of the Constitution," yet Trump "has issued an executive order that claims presidential authority to impose on states his own view of the needed voting rules — including proof of citizenship, revised machine standards and limits on mail-ballot counting."

Trump has also put election deniers in key posts, they note, and with those in place, he "could order many kinds of federal intervention."

"But perhaps the gravest worry is that Trump will deploy the armed forces under the Insurrection Act," they write. "Trump could claim his opponents are obstructing election laws and call in troops to enforce those laws in accordance with his wishes. Such deployments could occur before, during or after voting begins."

The integrity of the midterms, they say, depends on the "fortitude" of state and local officials who administer the elections, and on how the American people react to them.

"A broad, highly visible public reaction could influence elected officials within Mr Trump’s party as they weigh the risks of complicity in any effort to subvert election results," they write.

"In the darkest scenarios, such as the deployment of troops to jurisdictions where Republicans lose, the degree of responsible civic resistance could determine whether the nation’s voting institutions hold firm," they add.

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