TRUMP'S ELECTION THREAT? There's a lot of talk going around about Donald Trump having "stolen" the 2024 election from Kamala Harris, and that he is likely to cancel the 2026 midterm elections. Trump is a cheat, of course, so there's a fair basis for concern, but the talk doesn't reflect the facts. The brief reply is:
VOTING MACHINES ARE NOT EASILY HACKED: As for the 2024 election having been stolen, there's an ongoing frenzy about "hacked voting machines" -- inflamed by Trump making comments hinting Elon Musk had rigged voting machines. Taking that remark seriously is forgetting that Trump talks trash all the time, and there's no evidence of substantial tampering with the voting machines. Voting machines have to be physically hacked individually; they can be and are hacked, but it's like counterfeiting $1 bills: not worth the bother.
Voting machines generate paper printouts, and the machines are not connected online. The printouts are fed to a tabulating machine, which is also not online. The results are transferred via USB stick to a laptop PC to assemble them -- and the PC is not online, either. The results from the laptop PC are transferred by USB stick to a PC that then uploads them to a state central server. That server could be hacked, but the results are doublechecked against those on the laptop after upload, so discrepancies will be spotted.
American elections are secure, with outright vote fraud being rare and very small-scale. In 2024, the Dems had, as always, poll watchers everywhere, and none saw anything seriously amiss. The government CISA online security agency saw nothing wrong. The vote in 2024 matched exit polls. Kamala Harris, with access to all valid US intelligence on the election, said it was fair -- though the skeptics dismissed Kamala as, basically, lying, suggesting that the skeptics were more interested in discrediting Kamala and the Dems than in helping them.
Those screaming "!ELECTION FRAUD!" kept talking about Trump's ramblings and bring up "new discoveries", but not one of those "discoveries" amounted to anything after five minutes of checking with Google:
It should be emphasized that Trump persists in saying that the 2020 election was stolen from him -- even going so far, in January 2026, as to send the FBI to seize 2020 ballots and other materials from the elections office in Fulton County, Georgia.
TRUMP CAN'T CALL OFF ELECTIONS: What about calling off the 2026 midterms? In January 2026, Trump revived the "election fraud" scare by saying in an interview that he had accomplished so much that "when you think of it, we shouldn't even have an election." There was a predictable fuss in response, but commenter Jamelle Bouie called for sanity, writing (edited-down here):
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How does he get [a] state board of elections to cancel the midterms? How does he get the Georgia board of elections to do it? How does he convince Republican House members to quit their jobs and give up their paychecks? [How does he cancel parallel state elections?]
ICE can't even deal with irate middle-aged Midwesterners. How does he occupy hundreds, if not thousands, of polling cites and precincts? TRUMP V ILLINOIS [which ended Trump's military deployment to Detroit] clarified that he has no legal authority to unilaterally commandeer National Guards.
Here's what happens after house elections in states and localities:
Notice who isn't involved here? The president or the current Speaker or the Senate.
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House members are not sworn in until after the new Speaker is elected. Senators are sworn in by the vice president -- but if the VP isn't available, it's done by the "president pro-tempore" of the Senate. The president pro tempore, usually a senior member of the majority party, is like the House Speaker in being elected by the Senate at the beginning of a new Congress, before senators are sworn in. Members of Congress cannot be locked out by anything but an application of force.
There is the fear that he could pull off another 6JAN21 across the USA, but as JB says:
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January 6th was a mob of people attacking a single, lightly defended location in order to stop a centralized process of vote counting. For a midterm election, the comparable thing would be about 150,000 January 6ths across the entire USA. [It failed anyway.]
Let's say Trump wants to suppress the vote in Detroit. Assuming a conventional "20 soldiers for every 1000 civilians" occupation ratio, he would need more than 12,000 ICE agents -- over twice as many as he has -- to occupy Detroit, and only Detroit.
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In January 2026, one Adam Bonin -- who described himself as "the attorney who has led Democratic voter protection efforts in the City of Philadelphia for every election since 2014" -- commented online:
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There are 690 separate polling locations, for 1703 voting divisions, just in the City of Philadelphia. And Pennsylvania law specifies that LEOs cannot be within 100 feet of the entrance to a polling location unless (a) they're there to vote or (b) have been asked to come in to break up a fight.
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Other commenters pointed out that, more generally:
Incidentally, Trump has talked of "seizing ballot boxes and voting machines", but that's no more than variation on the same scenario.
* However, the scare over Trump trying to shut down elections got a big boost in February 2026, when his stooge Steve Bannon proclaimed: "We're going to have ICE surround the polls come November. We're not going to let you steal the country."
The general reaction on the Left was that the notoriously sleazy and dishonest Bannon was trolling. Again, ICE doesn't have the manpower to raid more than a tiny fraction of polling places. Which ones do they raid? And might doing so influence the broader vote to turn against the GOP? What about early voting or voting by mail?
A Professor Kate Starbird of the University of Washington in Seattle replied: "ICE at the polls! Bannon is basically yelling FIRE in a crowded theater here. His objective is to cause chaos (and suppress votes on the left). And it's already working."
Starbird pointed out that deploying ICE against polling places is, of course, illegal, and that Bannon is just trying to scare people into not voting. Bannon is, I should add, was trying to spread "FUD (Fear Uncertainty Doubt)". Democrats, Starbird said, shouldn't be amplifying the FUD -- but she said the threat was still real and should be taken seriously. What to do? She says:
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First, local and state governments need to do everything in their power to ensure that people can vote safely, without fear of intimidation. Simultaneously ... they need to proactively communicate to voters that they will be safe & protected while exercising their right to vote.
Second, the legal election observers ... need to be trained to also document illegal intimidation near the polls, & there needs to be a mechanism for [those affected] by any of these activities to RAPIDLY connect to legal assistance.
Third, journalists, non-profits, social media influencers, and everyday people need to be VERY discerning and careful about not amplifying unsubstantiated rumors about ICE or [others interfering at polling places] because false rumors (even if well-meaning) WILL suppress the vote."
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Starbird was pleased to see from replies to her posting that Bannon was doing little more than motivating people to vote, and suggested he was doing little more than mobilizing the vote against the GOP.
TRUMP CAN MAKE TROUBLE ON THE MARGINS: In any case, the bottom line is that the Trump Regime can make endless trouble, but they're too dimwitted and incompetent to carry out elaborate plans. It seems interviews with Trump, he has resigned himself to losing the midterms, and is just whining. In practice, Trump's current efforts to undermine elections have focused on four efforts:
The Trump Regime has put a lot of effort into mid-decade redistricting efforts to gerrymander states, but it hasn't proven very productive. In the first place, the states working on redistricting are already gerrymandered, so redistricting can't buy much.
Yes, Texas did redistrict to gain five more Red seats, but California then redistricted to gain five Blue seats, with a number of other Blue states redistricting as well. Redistricting in other Red states has tended to go off the rails, notably with Indiana telling Trump: Won't happen. In the case of Texas, the Trump Regime's "ethnic cleansing" crackdown has alienated Hispanic voters, suggesting the redistricting there won't yield any results. Thanks to an energetic response from Blue states, redistricting will obtain few or no wins for the GOP.
Trump's XOs have focused on "proof-of-citizenship requirements" for voters and a "received by election day" rule for mail-in ballots, with the Trump Regime threatening election funding for states that don't comply. Red states have complied, but Blue states have challenged the requirements in Federal court, with the courts so far judging against the Trump Regime.
The DOJ's demands for states to turn over voter files loaded with sensitive voter data have met the same fate, with only Red states complying, since the files would be used to undermine voting rights or to retaliate against Blue voters. The Trump Regime has no legal right to such data. Arizona's Secretary of State, Adrian Fontes, simply replied: "Pound sand." The Trump Regime's seizure of election materials from Fulton County, Georgia, in early 2026 was a disturbing escalation in this effort, but it's being challenged in Federal court and is unlikely to survive scrutiny. If shot down, the Trump Regime won't be able to pull that trick again.
Certainly, the Trump Regime intends to challenge election results in court with claims of fraud; that's definitely troublesome since in the Trump era, that's become normalized. Worse, there's been a corruption of local election systems, with biased officials becoming more common. That represents the most significant threat to elections, but so far the courts have not been inclined to play along, the challenges having gone nowhere in 2020. Democrats involved in the election process are keeping a close eye on dubious election officials, who will be immediately challenged if they try to upset elections.
* All of Trump's measures to steal the vote are very troublesome. Marc Elias, likely America's most prominent and active election lawyer, says:
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Those of us engaged in this fight are witnessing a wholesale attack on free and fair elections. From executive orders to budget cuts, the Trump Administration is undermining election security and promoting voter disenfranchisement.
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There is a real threat, but Justin Levitt -- a lawyer who advised the Biden Administration on voting rights -- points out there is much less there than meets the eye: "Donald Trump is a marketing machine, and what he is doing right now is marketing power he does not have."
Elizabeth Frost, a lawyer with the Marc Elias Group, says: "Everyone is seeing the polls. Literally none of [Trump's] policies are popular, so [the Trump Regime is] terrified of [elections]." Frost says they react with more bluster:
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The more Trump can say that the vote count can't be trusted, the more it serves his purpose ... Either voters will be repressed by laws or they will be repressed by misinformation and made-up bombastic nonsense.
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Referring to a Trump XO that tried to dictate how states run elections, Levitt said the XO was just "a piece of paper with a scrawly signature on it." -- adding: "It's an attempt to fool people. Trump's primary power is the power we give him when he asserts he is in control of everything, and we believe him." Trump wants people to capitulate in advance.
Jasleen Singh, a lawyer with the Brennan Center for Justice, makes it clear that Trump's actions against elections need to be taken seriously, but adds that we shouldn't be deceived by Trump's bluster: "The law is on our side. We have the right to vote. We have the right to participate ... Part of this is not letting voters forget the power that they have."
The Trump Regime pretends to be big and bad, but in reality it is weak. Trump, despite his bluster, cannot call off elections; the threat is more his determination to undermine the legitimacy of elections -- though Levitt says, that Trump's legal actions against elections are unserious: "The quality of lawyering they are doing now is, in a word, garbage. You're going to see the [DOJ] lose a lot of cases, and these are cases they should lose."
The bigger threat is that Trump has staffed his administration with election cheaters who could use the government's resources to interfere with and undermine the credibility of elections. Along with scams such as demanding voter rolls, the Trump Regime has pointedly undermined election cybersecurity, and is keeping up the drumbeat against fair elections. It's a marginal threat, but one that demands ongoing vigilance.
