With the Supreme Court slapping down Trump’s efforts to stymie mail voting and reports that he really doesn’t care about elections or is resigned to the outcome when he’s not on the ballot, there’s a little relief among voting rights advocates.
Get over it. The danger is greater than ever.
Trump cares desperately about the November elections; look at his actions and threats. He engineered the unusual series of gerrymanders to give Republicans more House seats, tried to eliminate most mail voting, fabricated charges about illegal immigrants voting or foreigners trying to hurt him and even is opening up his campaign war chest.
It’s not that he cares about about any candidate other than himself. But the prospects of congressional investigations, with subpoena powers, of pervasive corruption in this administration and the Trump family is an inconvenience he urgently wants to avoid.
“He will use every trick in the book to try to continue to rig these elections,” Democratic Sen. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, charged.
Think that’s partisan hyperbole? How about a top Republican urging voters to “cheat like hell like they do.” That was Donald J. Trump at the GOP’s Dallas convention this month.
Years ago a conservative pro-Trump journalist said he should be taken “seriously not literally.” We’ve learned they are almost indistinguishable.
“The greatest threat to the upcoming midterm elections is not the Democrats or the Chinese, noncitizens voting or electronic voting machines but the President of the United States and his servile Republican Congress,” wrote retired federal judge J. Michael Luttig, a prominent conservative.
There are multiple threats but in talking to knowledgeable sources, three stand out.
First the threat of sending federal agents, FBI or ICE agents, to polling locations with larger numbers of minority voters under the guise of voter fraud by “illegal immigrants.” Just consider - an undocumented worker, petrified of being apprehended, going to a public polling place or sending mail with a return address to a public place to take an illegal action?
But sending agents into the vicinity -- it’s against the law to send cops to polling places -- is to intimidate legal voters many of whom know about ICE agents assaulting and, in a few cases, murdering legal citizens under the pretense of rooting out illegals. FBI Director Kash Patel told a Senate hearing that he would not “shy away” from “protecting election integrity.” Homeland Security Secretary Mullin said he would only dispatch ICE agents to polling locations if “there is a threat” or to serve a warrant.
So in late October if the Don tells them there’s a threat down in the Rio Grande Valley, does anyone believe they’d respond, “Sorry sir we need more evidence?” They’ll put their jack boots on and charge.
The Democrats and voting rights advocates will go to court. In some venues like Texas they may struggle to get a court order, as the fear factor spreads.
Another huge threat is on election day or those leading up to it, to seize the voting machines and the ballots. That’s just Hollywood stuff, right?
Well the Cecil B. DeMille of election fraud -- Donald Trump -- told the New York Times earlier this year that he regretted “not ordering the National Guard to seize voting machines in 2020.” He wasn’t sure they were sufficiently up to the task. He has had time to try to solve that problem, even got in a practice run this year seizing the 2020 Atlanta ballots.
He would have the full support of his ever accommodating attorney general, Todd Blanche, as opponents rush to file court orders stopping this. What happens if they already have the possession of the ballots, the machines?
If the election gets through all of this there’s one final test: certifying the winners. Some red state officials may try to question the validity of victorious Democrats. In the House, the clerk, in what is intended to be a ministerial role, certifies the new members before the next Congress convenes.
But if the Democrats gain less than a dozen seats, the current Speaker Mike Johnson could replace the current clerk with a partisan lackey who would rule against those contested Democrats. That would be appealed to the courts, the Supreme Courts.
There’s cause and precedence for the Court stepping into this. Winning at least five votes would only be possible with the active support of Chief Justice Roberts.
The Trump led Republicans would try to drag this out warns Judge Luttig: “Judicial review of the House’s decision not to seat Democratic Representatives-elect in the 120th Congress would take weeks, if not months, during which time the United States would be in the throes of a paralyzing constitutional crisis.”
The best hope to avoid this calamity is for Democrats to enlist the best advocates and lead lawyers -- the post 2020 Biden team of former Solicitor Generals Seth Waxman, Walter Dellinger and Don Verrilli is the model.
Most of all make the November 3 vote too big to steal.