Trump's Plan to Interfere with Elections, Continued Again

For the past two days, I have written about cult leader, convicted felon, and failed President Donald Trump's threat to November's midterm elections. Today will be my third and probably last installment for the moment in this series. Previously, I mostly discussed steps Trump has taken to uncover evidence that the 2020 election was stolen. While Trump is likely motivated by his narcissistic inability to accept that he lost that election, he is also driven, as is his inner circle, by a desire to cast doubt on the fairness of past voting so that he can justify intervention in upcoming elections. Today, I will discuss some of the steps that Trump has already taken or is in the process of taking in this regard. It is important to understand that Trump is unlikely to take a single dramatic step to intervene in the elections. Rather, there will be a series of smaller measures, some of which can already be documented.

Before going any further, I want to be clear about one thing. Article I, Section 4, Clause 1 of the U.S. Constitution says:

The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations, except as to the Places of chusing Senators.

Therefore, the governance of elections lies with state legislatures. Congress could change regulations that states develop, but there is no role whatsoever for the President. As such, the constant bleating by Trump about elections should rightfully be ignored. It is a symptom of our broken government that it is not. Trump can issue executive orders, he can post "truths" on Truth Social, he can go on television and issue edicts, but none of it matters. At least it should not matter if we did not live in a country in which a sizable number of its citizens, especially among the elite, seem hungry for a dictatorship. Unfortunately, because in today's United States laws seem to have little importance, we are forced to pay attention to what Trump is saying and doing.

I am not of the opinion that Trump is capable of developing sophisticated, complex, and nuanced plans. Trump gets an idea in his head and then pursues it relentlessly. For example, he ordered Attorney General Pam Bondi to prosecute former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James despite there being no evidence of criminal activity on their part. Trump is the sort who can be convinced that the voter rolls of certain states will reveal fraud and, as a result, make obtaining that data a priority. But he doesn't think much beyond that. Because I think a wider look at the effort to subvert elections shows a fairly complicated plan, I assume that someone other than Trump is orchestrating it. I will not speculate at this time who that might be. The result, however, is that there is often a slight of hand going on. For instance, Trump constantly rails against the use of mail-in ballots, arguing that mail-in ballots are rife with cheating. There is actually no evidence to support Trump's allegations. Moreover, eliminating mail-in ballots might decrease voting among some Trump-supporting constituencies. But what if the effort to prohibit mail-in voting was actually aimed at forcing voting into centralized voting locations that are, by nature, easier to control? That might make more sense from the viewpoint of someone hoping to intervene in elections. This is particularly true when viewed in the context of other moves Trump is making.

In addition to attacking mail-in voting, Trump has criticized all forms of early voting. He clearly favors voting being a one-day event. Among other things, voting being held on a single day in a limited number of locations would be the ideal arrangement for someone hoping to intervene in elections.

One of the most dangerous steps taken by the Trump administration was to demand detailed voting data from the states. The Brennan Center for Justice has covered this issue closely, writing that:

Since May 2025, the Justice Department has demanded full, unredacted voter rolls — which would include driver’s license and partial Social Security numbers — from at least 44 states and the District of Columbia. Most have refused to provide these records and have instead provided publicly available versions of their voter files. Since September, the DOJ has sued 24 of those jurisdictions for refusing to hand over their voters’ sensitive information. Courts in California and Oregon have already rejected the DOJ’s claims that it is entitled to the unredacted voter files.

The DOJ claims that this data is needed to help uncover fraud and ineligible voters. However, the administration is packed with figures, starting with Trump himself, who have spent years advocating disproven claims of voting fraud in previous elections. They are unlikely to conduct a fair and objective investigation. Moreover, there is a sort of dirty secret about voting rolls. None of them are perfect. People move, often out of state. They die. They change their names. Sometimes individuals register or are registered to vote without really understanding what they are doing and they have no intention of voting. As a result, voting rolls are almost always filled with ineligible voters, almost none of whom actually vote. Anyone who is intentionally trying to manufacture evidence of irregularities based on voter rolls will almost certainly be successful. Showing that these registration issues translated into actual voting fraud would be more of a challenge, but that distinction probably won't matter to the Trump administration.

Consider a recent case of "voter fraud" in Alaska that Bolts Magazine recently reported. I was not aware, and probably most people are not aware, of the particular status of people born in American Samoa. As Bolts explains:

American Samoa is the only U.S. state or territory where people are born without automatic citizenship, and without the right to vote in state, federal, and most local elections anywhere outside of American Samoa.

Unlike people born in the other U.S. territories of Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands, American Samoans are classified simply as “U.S. nationals”—a sort of limbo state that acknowledges they are American by birth, but still denied the full rights and privileges of citizenship.

The article further details that Samoans living in Alaska were not aware that they were ineligible to vote. For that matter, Alaskan officials were not aware either and advised the Samoans that they could vote. Therefore, when a Samoan ran for office, and other Samoans voted, they all technically committed election fraud. The state is now charging them with felonies. This is the sort of complex situation, in this case based on a misunderstanding by both individuals and the government, that can be exploited to demonstrate fraud and to justify federal intervention.

This leads to the most explicit indication of Trump's plan to intervene in the midterm elections. Trump has started talking about the need to "nationalize elections." Speaking on "The Dan Bongino Show," Trump said:

The Republicans should say, we want to take over. We should take over the voting, the voting in at least many, 15 places. The Republicans ought to nationalize the voting.

When asked by reporters what he meant by this, Trump responded by saying that if states cannot run elections properly, Republicans should do something about it. He then went on to list Democratic states and cities as places in which the Republicans should intervene.

Following this, Steve Bannon joined the fray, saying "We're gonna have ICE surround the polls...We'll never again allow an election to be stolen." The combination of Trump's and Bannon's remarks suggests to many that Trump would deploy ICE to interfere with voting in Democratic cities and states. However, this idea faces a number of obstacles.

As stated above, Trump has no role in elections. When House and Senate Republicans have been asked if they agree with Trump that elections should be nationalized, they have almost invariably fallen back to saying that what Trump really was discussing was the SAVE Act. The SAVE Act would require individuals to provide proof of citizenship when registering to vote. Ironically, the bill does not allow a birth certificate to be used as such proof. As bad as the SAVE Act may be, and make no mistake about it, it is very bad, it is nothing like Trump and Bannon have been discussing.

Another reality is that short of fully deploying the military, Trump does not have enough personnel to surround every polling place. Of course, there is no need for him to surround Republican locations, but there are not enough federal agents to even cover the Democratic sites. Many election experts say that threats to send ICE or other federal agents to polls are hollow and aimed only at generating fear. For example, Nora Cregon wrote on Bluesky that:

I’ve been working on the Lawyers’ Committee Election Protection project for more than 20 years. This kind of threat happens in almost every cycle and almost never materializes. The threat - creating fear - IS the voter suppression tool. It costs nothing so any suppression it produces is a plus.

I accept that there is no real threat that ICE will surround a large number of voting locations. However, the fear of it happening can, as Cregon says, result in voter suppression by itself. Moreover, I see this as part of a multistep process. First, eliminate early and mail-in voting. Then, trim the voting rolls as aggressively as possible. Decrease the number of polling places. Then, spend weeks warning that ICE will be at polling places and questioning everyone about their citizenship. Finally, early on voting day, have some high-profile ICE deployments to create more fear. Moreover, concentrate all of these efforts on locations in which races are close and a small number of votes can make a difference. As I noted yesterday, Trump has already targeted voting in Georgia and Minnesota, two states that will likely have close Senate races. ICE was recently deployed with much publicity to Maine, which will also have a competitive Senate contest. However, ICE was withdrawn at the request of Senator Susan Collins, the incumbent in that race. The ICE presence was apparently hurting her chances. But, there is no reason that ICE couldn't return and target only areas that are not favorable for Collins.

Trump has been explicit about his hopes to intervene in the midterm elections. His calls to "nationalize" the elections in Democratic areas and his demands for voter data have been far from subtle. ICE is being weaponized to suppress votes, even if its potential to interfere is being exaggerated. All of this adds up to a multifaceted effort to prevent Democratic victories in November.