It's become accepted religion on MS-NOW political talk broadcasts – and in Democratic circles in and out of Congress — that one way or another, Donald Trump is actively aiming to disrupt the November elections.
The tools for disruption vary from Trump attempts to tilt the balloting rules or push for gerrymandered districts to full-blown deployment of armed Homeland Security armies around voting precincts in at least 15 jurisdictions, picking up from Trump's own projections about where he intuits widespread voter fraud without a shred of evidence to persuade, say, a judge.
To a certain extent, then, Trump already has proved successful in at once annoying and frightening Americans with his ever-present, evidence-free, authoritarian push.
It is Trump, of course, who is pushing this argument by word and deed. Rather than accept that the slice of voters who decide between wins and losses is a relatively small, fickle group that drifts back and forth between parties, Trump cannot stomach a loss or even the suggestion that his every act is not adored by friend and foe alike. And so, we have White House trumpeting about "nationalizing" elections that are Constitutionally assigned to states, a public seizure of 2020 ballots in Atlanta, involvement of officials who have nothing to do with elections in precincts where Trump has suffered losses, redrawing of districts, and a so-far failing campaign to grab every state's voting rolls for Trump's own review.
It is Trump who is making clear that he wants to interfere and control elections before voting, in the actual submission of ballots, and, naturally, with the counting of votes. The goal in November is to retain majorities in both houses of Congress and the incessant questioning, oversight activities and possibilities of impeachment that could follow a return of a Democratic majority in even one house.
What Evidence?
Much as Fox, Newsmax and other outlets on the right regularly promote deportation efforts and the need to preserve voting from undue, "fraudulent" voting by immigrants, the MS-NOW crowd of regulars sees a different reality in Trump's dedicated march to undercut voting by making the process more difficult and results always questionable.
Both sides repeat their vents over election tactics endlessly, to the exclusion of other public issues also in contention.
The difference, of course, is that the MS-NOW pundits base their thinking on plethora of actions as well as statements that offer warning signs, on scores of court decisions that have found the "fraud" and "rigging" of elections arguments to be without merit, and on current laws in states that already bar voting by non-citizens and voter registration processes in most states that require showing various documents to be eligible to vote even in local elections.
The "pro-democracy" pundits are reacting to welcomed pressure on the White House coming from Steve Bannon, among others within MAGA, to do anything, including deploying military troops or paramilitary border police to surround polls, discourage voting even in person, and, naturally to eliminate such efforts as mail ballots that encourage more voting, not less.
This weekend, Trump promised on social media that he would issue an executive order to require voters to show identification in the midterm elections even if Congress does not do so. Trump posted, "There will be Voter I.D. for the Midterm Elections, whether approved by Congress or not!"
Trump has already attempted to use an executive order to alter voting laws last March, but in January, a federal judge threw it out, finding that the president does not have the authority to unilaterally alter election procedures.
Trump is stumping for something called The SAVE Act in Congress, which would require voters to show passport or other documents each time they vote – and would require all states to turnover state voter rolls loaded with personal information to Trump's government, presumably for unspecified checks against citizenship records. For anyone who has worked with data, name checks are the worst possible way to match records because of name or initial changes, spellings, relocations among jurisdictions. Voter rolls do not list who actually voted, just who once registered.
Like most legislation, there is some kernel that makes sense, but partisan disagreement about its effects, about how it would be used, and the broader un-Constitutionality of putting the feds in charge of activity directly assigned to states.
A Campaign Against Voting
Taken together, Trump's activities towards elections past and present show a consistent line: He wants to sow distrust for the results. On some level, it makes no sense. He supported the outcome of the same voting techniques and procedures when he won in 2016 and 2024, but not 2020 – or apparently in the looming November results.
For those who followed the investigations of activities ending in the Jan. 6, 2021, efforts to remain in office despite election results, it feels all too familiar. These are the same drumbeats that Special Counsel Jack Smith was prepared to prosecute as illegal conspiracy to overturn election law.
Trump does not help himself in these matters when, as over the weekend, he takes his tales of election woe to a military base in North Carolina, in a partisan address to Fort Bragg soldiers in blatant violation of military tradition, if not law. Trump does not help his credibility by sending Tulsi Gabbard as director of national intelligence to participate in a search warrant seizure of ballots in Atlanta, or dispatching Homeland Secretary Kristi Noem to Arizona over securing voter rolls. Rather, those come across to the public as sending willing co-conspirators in what seem warning signals that this federal government will intervene in state elections.
Here was Noem in an Arizona interview: "When it gets to Election Day, we've been proactive to make sure that we have the right people voting, electing the right leaders to lead this country." Regardless of party, how are we not supposed to take this as between inappropriate and dangerous?
What most ails our voting in this country is that its residents don't vote. A 60 percent turnout is considered high. Only Trump sees widespread fraud – especially when the same exact ballot elects those Republicans in Congress or state legislatures who must carry out Trump's assault on voting focused on minority precincts in states whose outcomes he did not like.
What most ails our Trump administration about voting is that it seeks to depress the vote, and uses the hammer of immigration as a supposed explanation for what seems genuinely widespread unhappiness with most of Trump's policies about tariffs and prices, access to health care and childcare, a vastly growing gap between rich and poor, the abuse of the Justice Department and FBI towards partisan political ends, its opposition to climate concerns and the promotion of self-aggrandizing schemes for Trump's own family, friends and backers, and the attack on democracy itself.
Watch for the actions as well as bluster of Truth Social posts.
