President Donald Trump turned heads earlier this week when he quipped that the U.S. "shouldn't even have an election" in November. One expert is now cautioning that while Trump may not be able to call off the midterms entirely, he has several tools at his disposal that he may use to dissuade Americans from casting ballots.
In a Friday essay for his Substack, Seth Masket — who is the director of the Center for American Politics at the University of Denver — explained that because states administer elections and not the federal government, he is powerless to cancel the 2026 midterm elections. However, he observed that the president can still "mess them up substantially" in a variety of ways.
First, Masket pointed out that Trump can deploy federal agents to patrol cities on Election Day as a means of intimidating voters (particularly voters of color and non-English speakers) from going into polling places. Masket wrote that the best way at-risk groups could counter intimidation tactics is to "vote anyway."
"This country has a very long and regrettable history of powerful groups trying to keep people of color away from ballot booths and those latter groups heroically organizing to overcome those barriers," he wrote. "But it’s real work, and there will likely be more fear around voting than there has been in decades."
According to Masket, Trump may try to influence the outcome of the midterms similar to 2020, when he cast aspersions on early voting and voting by mail, while also maligning the entire mail-in voting process as fraudulent. He noted that the president may even sign an executive order declaring mail-in voting to be illegal, or that all states must require that voters present a photo ID when registering to vote, despite such an order having no real power over how states conduct elections.
Trump may also attempt to "undermine credibility of the results before they even happen," with Masket calling that the "more likely scenario" heading into the midterms. He theorized that in the event that control of the U.S. Senate comes down to "a few thousand votes in one or two states" that Trump could spread disinformation and encourage litigation in those states as a means of throwing out ballots or preventing the counting of votes.
"This could result in a situation where the majority party of the Senate remains unclear for a while, where Vice President Vance refuses to seat a Democratic Senator, and where there’s just another ongoing constitutional crisis," Masket wrote.
Click here to read Masket's Substack essay in full.
