U.S. President Donald Trump delivers remarks on the U.S. economy and affordability at the Mount Airy Casino Resort in Mount Pocono, Pennsylvania, U.S. December 9, 2025. REUTERS Jonathan Ernst
Many commentators have raised alarm about the ways President Donald Trump and the Republican Party are laying the groundwork to steal or contest the November midterms. According to New York Times political analyst Jamelle Bouie, however, there is a clear reason the “intricate scheme” necessary for Trump to control the election results will fail: sheer incompetence.
As Bouie explains, many are “quite concerned about the midterm elections,” worrying “in particular about what Donald Trump might do to subvert the outcome. You remember January 6. You see the headlines about Trump trying to get control of mail and ballots, of Trump trying to sue states to get voter rolls. You see him issuing broad executive orders that purport to wrangle control of elections from the states to the White House. And you're worried that even if Democrats win, something will happen that will prevent them from taking power.”
But according to Bouie, actually stealing the election would be “an extraordinarily difficult lift.” He notes, for example, that the idea of posting federal agents at polls might be an intimidation tactic that “might work in a single state and might work in a cluster of districts, but there's going to be dozens of competitive districts. There are many competitive Senate seats, and states are huge. In many of these elections, hundreds of thousands, if not millions of voters will be voting. And voters, for the most part, aren't actually concentrated in a handful of places. You would need a literal army of guys to be able to successfully do this in one state.”
What’s more, asserts Bouie, “that's setting aside how the administration has acted over the past year. There's no real evidence on display that they're competent enough, put together enough, anything enough, to really accomplish this.”
He says that the same goes for the various lawsuits the Trump administration has filed regarding elections: “The administration has lost all of them. The Department of Justice literally does not have enough people to put forth to try to win these cases. And this is setting aside the fact that there's just no legal basis for the administration's attempt to seize control of elections.” While many argue that Trump and his allies don’t care about the law, Bouie says that’s not the case, explaining, “The law confers legitimacy, and they want these things to have a veneer of legitimacy, so they do care about the law. That's why they sue, right? That's why they engage in the legal process. And the fact is that the law just isn't on their side. Even Trump judges are rejecting this stuff. It’s a sign of how difficult it is to do this.”
Bouie notes that many are less worried about what happens in November than about the possibility that Republicans will have some scheme for subverting the outcome. But he argues, “I think a lot of you overestimate both Republican ingenuity and the success of various Republican plots. I think a lot of folks have bought into the Republican Party's own propaganda about itself, about the genius of figures like Mitch McConnell and the like. I think if you take an objective look at Republican plots, what you see is that a lot of them just aren't very successful. They don't quite amount to much. You see plenty of failure.”
Furthermore, he explains, there is no mechanism for Republican lawmakers to prevent the swearing in of Democratic members. When the House reconvenes in January, Mike Johnson (R-LA) will no longer be the majority leader, regardless of which party comes out ahead. He’ll have to be reconfirmed as such after the members have been sworn in. And while objections can be raised to the seating of individual Democrats, “there is no rule or law that says that objections have to be honored during the swearing-in process… The objection can be registered and they can receive the oath anyway, and then the majority afterwards would deal with those objections. And the majority in the case Democrats win would be the Democrats.”
Bouie does assert that Americans should remain "vigilant” by participating in the election in overwhelming numbers and “being ready to object with your physical presence should anything really pop off in January.” He also asserts, however, that it is improbable that the Republicans can pull off such a heist. As he concludes, “I'm not going to totally rule it out, but you have to recognize that to do all of these things together requires a kind of intricate scheme with a lot of moving pieces and a lot of high competence. And I need everyone to ask themselves: have they seen the capacity to do that from this administration?”