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- Democratic leaders, election officials and civic groups are preparing responses to potential Trump efforts to intimidate voters, seize ballots or deny the outcome of November’s midterms.
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leaders → click → midterms
- Much of the work is being done quietly to avoid revealing too much of the strategy to the Trump administration or stoking unnecessary fear among voters.
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Much → do → voters
Big-city mayors are giving poll workers panic buttons in case election skeptics question their work.
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skeptics → give → work
County and state officials are gaming out responses to immigration raids near voting centers.
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officials → game → centers
Lawyers for Democratic states and civic groups are pre-writing legal challenges to ballot seizures.
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pre → pre → seizures
And Democratic aides in Washington are preparing members of Congress to push back in the court of public opinion against any baseless claims of voter fraud in competitive districts.
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members → prepare → districts
Across California and the nation, civic organizations, voting rights advocates and Democratic leaders are preparing for a raft of potential actions by the Trump administration to interfere in, subvert or deny November’s midterm vote.
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organizations → prepare → vote
President Trump, an election denier for years, has without evidence described the U.S. election system as badly corrupted by fraud and dangerously vulnerable to both domestic and foreign interference.
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Trump → describe → interference
He has said he would do “anything necessary” to have “honest elections,” and has tried since returning to office to unilaterally rewrite the rules for voting nationwide and wrest control of elections from the states through executive orders and other administrative measures.
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he → say → orders
Now, he has declined to rule out additional and unprecedented steps to force his will on the November election, including through emergency declarations and military deployments, and in February suggested Republicans should simply take over voting in blue states.
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Republicans → decline → states
Election experts say there is no evidence of widespread voter fraud in American elections, despite Trump’s allies searching for years.
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allies → say → years
Much of the work to resist any Trump interference or power grab is being done quietly to avoid revealing too much of the strategy to the Trump administration or stoking unnecessary fear among voters.
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Much → resist → voters
It is designed to match what Trump’s opponents see as his three-part “interference playbook” — to “deceive” voters before the election, “disrupt” the vote itself and “deny” any unfavorable results after, said Justin Vail of Protect Democracy, a prominent litigant against the administration.
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Vail → design → administration
“The threats are real,” Vail said, “but the preparation is larger and more coordinated than ever before.”
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preparation → say → ?
Shasta County registrar of voters Clint Curtis said he wants to hire Tina Peters, the former Colorado county clerk convicted of charges related to election tampering.
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he → say → tampering
The scenarios being planned for include the president deploying troops or immigration agents to polling sites to intimidate voters, fomenting unrest as a pretext to declare a national emergency, claiming fraud in the ballot counts of key congressional races or commanding the U.S. Postal Service to intervene in mail ballot delivery.
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president → plan → delivery
All told, the efforts amount to an unprecedented exercise to ensure the nation’s elections are safe from its own federal government.
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elections → tell → government
They also reflect a deterioration in trust between states and counties overseeing elections, voting rights and pro-democracy advocates and a federal administration that has denigrated their work and tried to take control of voting away from states.
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that → reflect → states
As public frustration with the economy mounts and Trump’s approval rating sinks, Democrats have become hopeful their party will retake power in Congress.
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party → mount → Congress
Trump, meanwhile, has suggested that alleged election integrity problems will be the culprit if Republicans lose.
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Republicans → suggest → ?
In California, 61% of voters recently identified federal inference in November as a “major concern,” according to a UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies poll co-sponsored by The Times.
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% → identify → Times
“We are taking this threat really seriously,” said Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), who helped form a Senate task force to prepare.
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who → take → force
“Politically, I’m very optimistic about the midterms.
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I → ’m → midterms
But I’m also deeply concerned with the president’s willingness to interfere with them — and the fact that, unlike even in 2020, where there were at least some people around him to try to constrain what he was doing, all those people are gone.
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people → ’m → what
Nothing is being ruled out after Trump’s supporters, at his goading, violently attacked the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, following his 2020 election loss to Joe Biden.
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supporters → rule → Biden
Other preparation is political, as members of Congress, mayors and other elected officials position themselves to use their bully pulpits and legislative powers to punch back.
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members → elect → pulpits
And grassroots campaigns are also unfolding, as community leaders recruit voters to defend their local elections, including online.
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leaders → unfold → online
“This is an all-hands-on-deck task,” said Skye Perryman, president of the nonpartisan legal organization Democracy Forward.
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Perryman → say → organization
“We’re anticipating scenarios we haven’t seen before in the United States.”
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we → anticipate → States
Trump, who has never accepted his 2020 loss to Biden despite scores of reviews and audits confirming the result, has consistently sought to undermine Americans’ trust in elections, telling the nation in a prime-time speech last month that the voting system was “broken” and claiming that the SAVE America Act, a strict Republican-proposed voter ID and citizenship measure, is necessary to fix it.
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Act → accept → it
The White House said it wouldn’t respond to hypothetical questions about the midterm election, but said anyone who breaks voting laws will be held accountable.
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who → say → laws
Lauren Bis, a White House spokesperson, blamed “extreme liberal Democrats” for undermining U.S. confidence in elections by blocking the SAVE America Act, which Trump has failed to push through Congress.
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Trump → blame → Congress
Bis claimed voters support such changes, and said “President Trump is absolutely right: We fix this now, or we lose our country.”
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we → claim → country
Causes for concern
The fears of interference are driven by Trump’s long record of election denial; his recent insistence that the midterms are vulnerable to both domestic fraud and foreign interference; his success installing loyalists and fellow election deniers in powerful positions throughout his government; and his current administration’s many attempts to usurp control over state voting processes, including through executive orders, lawsuits and legislation.
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midterms → drive → orders
Trump and his allies have sued to compel blue states to turn over voter rolls; seized ballots in Georgia; tried to limit mail voting via new U.S. Postal Service rules; pushed stricter citizenship and voter ID requirements via executive order and in Congress; diminished independent agencies tasking with helping states secure elections; kicked off a nationwide gerrymandering effort to boost Republican chances in the House; and threatened to imprison Democratic leaders who stand in their way.
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who → sue → way
Some analysts saw Trump’s speech last month as laying the groundwork for greater intervention in November, and he raised further alarm this month by entertaining a suggestion from conservative radio host and election conspiracy theorist Wayne Allyn Root that the president has “the right to declare a national security emergency” to unilaterally enforce new voting restrictions.
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president → see → restrictions
“Stranger things have happened,” Trump responded.
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Trump → happen → ?
The White House has previously downplayed the likelihood of immigration agents being deployed to polling locations, but Trump has refused to rule it out.
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Trump → downplay → it
Legal experts say such a move would probably be swiftly blocked by courts, as would any unlawful deployment of military troops to polls.
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deployment → say → polls
Some voting experts said Trump’s efforts shouldn’t be blown out of proportion, particularly given federal courts’ dim view of them to date.
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efforts → say → date
…and 29 more, not listed.
The Aporia
