politics

What nightmare scenario is that? Someone inciting an insurrection to steal an election? An insurrectionist just getting shrugged at with a "boys will be boys"? The Supreme Court waving through an insurrectionist and declaring him not only eligible but also above the law? The Supreme Court turning out to be bought wholesale? A criminal getting elected as president? The president illegally gutting all infrastructure designed to provide checks and balances to his power and installing toadies in all positions of power? The president committing war crime after war crime, bombing countries at a whim, kidnapping other countries' leaders, taking bribes and sending his personal paramilitary army of masked thugs to terrorise random brown people, disappearing them into concentration camps and depriving them of their most basic rights?

Which potential future nightmare scenario is no longer unthinkable here?

So this article has a narrow scope, it only considers two ways Trump might interfere:

This interference could take many forms. But recent events have increased experts’ level of concern about two possibilities in particular:

• That the Trump administration will try to seize ballots and voting machines from key jurisdictions before votes have been fully counted.
• That Trump will deploy ICE or other federal agents to the vicinity of critical polling places, so as to deter turnout among voters in general — and those with undocumented family members, in particular.

So for context, the people who don't think Trump will succeed are:

Wendy Weiser, the VP of the Brennan Center,

and Justin Levitt, a constitutional law scholar and prior Biden-era deputy assistant attorney general in the DOJ's civil rights department.

So why does the article say the attempts will fail?

“There is a very high risk that the administration will use every tool at its disposal to get voting machines or ballots in the course of an upcoming election,” the Brennan Center’s Weiser told me. “But I don’t think there is a high risk that they will succeed.”

“I think every magistrate judge in the country would understand the difference between a search warrant to seize materials for an election that happened five years ago and a search warrant to seize election materials from an election in progress,” Levitt said. “I understand why people are worried. But it’s not remotely the same.”

So Weiser and Levitt think rule of law will prevail and the courts will not grant Trump the authority to seize election materials during the election.

What about ICE?

Even just having ICE presence at polling stations could deter certain voters, it's hard to say what the aggregate effects of these measures might be, from the article:

Their reasoning is simple: If ICE is harassing residents and causing traffic jams in heavily Democratic precincts, fewer Americans will make it to the voting booth in those areas. And voters with undocumented family members may be especially likely to stay home.

“Trump wants to project ICE as an all-powerful force everywhere,” Levitt said. “And they are, as Minneapolis is proving emphatically, not. There simply aren’t enough ICE personnel to blanket a modestly large city. We live in a big country. And it is hard to control through fear.”

Even in the Twin Cities — where Trump deployed some 3,000 immigration enforcement agents — ICE’s presence seems to have mobilized Democratic voters, rather than deterring them. In a special election on January 27 for Minnesota House district 64A, the Democratic candidate defeated her Republican opponent by a 91-point margin. In 2024, a Democrat had won the seat by 66.6 percentage points.

“There is clearly an effort afoot to interfere in our elections and that is something that people should be alarmed about,” Weiser said. “But this can be thwarted. And it must be.”

So the argument is that ICE doesn't have enough manpower for this strategy to work across the US, and attempting to use ICE this way could backfire and result in stronger Democratic wins like we saw in Minnesota.

What isn't mentioned are other ways Trump could attempt a coup or election interference that might ignore the constitution - the two individuals who are doubtful Trump will succeed are assuming the law will be respected and followed, and they don't consider other possibilities.

Governors need to call up their national guard, and place them around their state's vulnerable election infrastructure, with orders to prevent illegal interference in their local elections.

ICE can probably outman and outgun any local police department, outside of major ones like NYPD or LAPD, but not the national guard.

Trump would be forced to bring in the actual military to steal the election by force. At that point, he either has the support for a coup, or he doesn't.

In an executive order last spring, Trump asserted that, if a mail-in ballot arrives after Election Day, states cannot legally count it. Currently, many states — including Nevada and Virginia — count ballots that arrive shortly after Election Day, if they were postmarked on time.

In that same executive order, Trump called on the Election Assistance Commission to decertify every voting machine in the United States — and then recertify only those that met an exacting set of requirements. As The Atlantic’s David Graham notes, it’s not even clear that the government could procure enough voting machines to meet these new standards in time for November’s midterms.

Regardless, courts blocked both of these measures. Yet each established a rationale for the administration to reject any future election results that it did not like: This November, several states will count mail ballots in a manner that the White House has formally declared illegal, while virtually every precinct in the country will use voting machines that it has deemed untrustworthy.

I've been trying to keep track of their various attempts to steal the Midterms, and figured the most likely way was to instigate violence, then invoke Martial Law, and suspend elections until peace is restored, which will never happen, since he controls the peace.

I hadn't even considered this strategy, but it makes sense. We saw on Jan 6 that he had a Plan B, with the seditious False Electors Plot, so it makes sense that he'd have a Plan B for the Midterms, and probably a Plan C and D, too.

Carry a firearm and train.

Remember this isn't about whether or not they fail. It's the fact that they are cocky enough to do it in the first place.

”I think every magistrate judge in the country would understand the difference between a search warrant to seize materials for an election that happened five years ago and a search warrant to seize election materials from an election in progress,” Levitt said.

Fairly certain my concern isn’t whether they understand the difference, it’s whether they’ll care. MAGAt has been installing loyalist judges for a while, sure they got at least one in their pocket in each district?

Community organization of citizens is needed. Some thoughts:

1. Before the elections, they're going to try and purge eligible voters off the rolls, especially ones they consider likely democratic voters. (Part of what DOGE accomplished was acquiring and collating detailed government records on everyone and ways to query that data for their purposes, like this one). So people who get purged may need help a) finding out in time that they were purged and b) getting re-registered, which could mean help with trips to offices and funds for fees so if needed they can get their birth certificate/marriage license or other required documents.

2. Everyone should vote early if they can. We don't even know if the Post office can be trusted with mail ballots either, so if you're in a vote-by-mail state, if possible, take your ballot to the election office ahead of time and hand it in personally. Either way, we need to organize rides to/from the election office for anyone who needs them so as many people as possible can vote early and minimize the number of people having to go to the polls on election day. That way if they do seize ballots from some stations, fewer votes would be lost.

3. Scouts in the areas near the polling places to call in any locations ICE shows up at and monitoring/reporting what they see back to the central group, who could send people there to record them.

4. Then we need ideas how to make sure people can still safely get in to vote if ICE is there, without disrupting anything, if that's possible. Maybe some civil rights lawyers or ACLU would have advice. In any case, documenting what they do is important. There are laws on how close people are allowed to a polling station but we could have multiple people filming from different angles and of any doors in/out. It would be good if the elections office could have cameras installed inside the locations, at least ones in "swing" districts where feds would be likely to try and interfere.

It’s not going to fail. I hope I’m wrong, but I don’t think we will see the outcome we’d like to see.

Trump will be trying to steal the election in lots of different ways simultaneously. This article doesn't even get to the ID law he's trying to pass, where your birth certificate must match your current ID, or you have to also supply all intervening name changes (such as through marriage and divorce).

Also, trump is using facial recognition software and other data that will allow them to pull non-trumpy voters out of the lineup for additional time-consuming harassment over their ID. Voting times may be cut off.

https://bylinetimes.com/2026/01/22/trump-has-already-rigged-the-2028-presidential-election-us-defence-insider/

Nothing to see here. Move along!