Washington Monthly Politics Editor Bill Scher says the panic voters are feeling at President Donald Trump’s midterm election meddling is probably premature.
“Be vigilant, be imaginative, but also remember that everything Trump is doing to impose restrictive voting measures is backfiring on Republicans, just like his previous efforts,” Scher said.
According to Scher, Trump betrayed his own panic about the upcoming midterm elections when he “vented” his debunked 2020 election conspiracies at FBI deputy-turned-podcaster Dan Bongino. Sensing massive defeat creeping up behind him in the midterms, Trump is looking to undermine the 2026 election that’s going to give the House — and possibly the Senate — to Democrats.
And while voters should be wary of Trump’s call for a “partisan takeover of the electoral apparatus … voter suppression and outright vote stealing,” what the White House and congressional Republicans are actually doing “suggests less of a coordinated plan to commandeer the midterms and more of a Republican Party in disarray amid a rising Blue Wave," according to the Washington Monthly columnist.
Trump confessed to Bongino of Republicans taking over the elections of 15 states, but Scher is quick to point out that the bill they’re looking to pass to restrict voters they don’t like is not going anywhere anytime soon.
“It’s never going to become law,” said Scher. “At least, not without scrapping the filibuster, which Senate Majority Leader John Thune, the South Dakota Republican, has long ruled out. … The House passed a version of the SAVE Act last spring, but it has yet to receive Senate consideration.”
Scher points out that even Republicans admit that ending the Senate filibuster is “almost certainly” necessary to pass the bill. But “rational Republicans, like Thune, likely recognize that the best way for the party in power to mitigate the usual midterm election losses is not by trying to suppress the vote but by enacting legislation that voters want, which they can’t do if Democrats refuse to relinquish the floor,” said Scher.
In any case, 21st century voter suppression tactics have been “repeatedly shown to flop,” Scher said. Plus, an anti-voter SAVE Act “stuck on the Senate floor, subject to ongoing filibuster, would be a gift to Democrats, helping them raise alarm about the erosion of democracy among left-leaning constituencies that are not always easy to motivate, especially in a midterm when turnout is almost always lower than in years with a presidential contest.”
“His executive order imposing national election rules was challenged in court and sidelined,” said Scher. “His legislation imposing national election rules can’t clear the Senate and is turning Republicans against each other. His national voter database can’t get off the ground. The nationalize-elections well is dry."
However, considering how Trump has already abused his power with National Guard and ICE deployments “designed to punish Democratic-run cities,” Scher said there’s no reason to assume Trump won’t try to send armed agents to election sites with the intent of intimidating voters, but states tend to react harshly to these intrusions. But he pointed out that Trump won’t be able to send the National Guard to states where they are not wanted after December’s Supreme Court ruling. And he’s wary of the “political blowback” of invoking the Insurrection Act to justify a new round of deployments to polling areas.
Scher said Trump’s “militarization of immigration enforcement has already backfired on Republicans, and any armed presence around election sites could easily do the same at the worst possible time. The number of energized and determined voters could easily outdo the number of intimidated voters.”
