Election interference - from Trump: What's going on & how it could happen

When an unrepentant man cheats at golf, business and marriage, it’s not unreasonable to consider he’d also try to cheat at anything.

Like an election.

Teachers/AFT President Randi Weingarten, whose new book is titled “Why Fascists Fear Teachers,” said, “I don’t actually care what you call it, but I care very much about what Trump is doing. He is using the presidency for his own benefit and to enrich himself and his family. He is trying to obstruct free and fair elections to maintain power.

“Donald Trump keeps trying to overturn the results of the 2020 election,” continued the labor leader, who teaches civics and earned a law degree. “He urged on the Jan. 6 rioters and pardoned even those who brutally attacked officers bravely protecting the Capitol. He is aggressively testing the legal and constitutional limits of presidential power.”

 

Why is this happening in the runup to November’s election?

Trump’s approval ratings are in the toilet, according to multiple polls, from CNN to Fox News. Trump has the support of just 34% of Americans in CNN’s latest poll, matching his lowest point just after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. He had the approval of 33% in an AP-NORC survey, tying his lowest since 2017, and 32% in Quinnipiac University data, falling to an all-time low in that poll.

 

What exactly is going on?

Here are some concerning developments:

* Trump on March 25 issued an Executive Order essentially trying to take control of voting and elections despite the Constitution reserving that responsibility to the states and Congress.

* In a related move, the Trump regime sent written demands to states to get their list of registered voters containing private personal data such as Social Security numbers and other confidential information.

* After federal Judge Indira Talwani of Boston stopped the March Executive Order, the administration on July 27 appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn that ruling and grab unilateral power over elections. Dozens of states on Aug. 3 filed briefs supporting Talwani’s decision, objecting to the EO’s creating a federal list of voters the administration deems eligible, explicitly threatening election officials, and using the Postal Service to block mail-in ballots to registered voters the feds decide shouldn’t vote.

The attorneys general said his EO is “an unprecedented, legally indefensible voter-verification and ballot-interception program.”

* Earlier this summer, the U.S. Supreme Court June 29, approved mail-in balloting in a separate case involving Mississippi.

* The Illinois State Board of Elections on July 15 said it had received threats of prosecution from the U.S. Department of Justice if the state refused to comply with Trump’s demands, and two days later received a separate threat from the Department of Homeland Security.

* On July 31, federal Judge Colleen Lawless of Springfield, Ill., dismissed Trump’s lawsuit demanding Illinois’ voter data, ruling that Illinois does not have to hand over unredacted, sensitive voter registration data to the U.S. Department of Justice.

* Previously, Trump on July 17 delivered a prime-time speech and declassified material he claimed showed fraud in the 2020 election. Instead, analyses of those documents didn’t verify his claims of China’s interference or other assertions. In fact, more than 60 lawsuits Trump filed about the 2020 election were dismissed or dropped, and Republican election attorney Ben Ginsberg said, “There is no substantive evidence to back up the charges that our elections aren’t accurate and certainly not that they're fraudulent.”

* Trump continues to insist the Senate pass the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act, which would require proof of citizenship through verifiable documents. Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich said that “45 states do not issue the kind of enhanced driver’s license indicating citizenship status that would be needed to verify voting eligibility. An estimated 9% of eligible voters, or 21.3 million Americans, either do not have documents that prove their citizenship, such as passports and birth certificates, or cannot retrieve them in a day or less, according a study by the Center for Democracy and Civic Engagement at University of Maryland.”

Still, the compliant House approved it in February by a 218-213 vote and also last month added its provisions to a defense and budget measure that passed 216-214. Nevertheless, the day after Trump’s prime-time speech, Alaska Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski said she’ll oppose it, joining GOP Sens. Susan Collins (R-ME), Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and Thom Tillis (R-NC), so the Senate doesn’t have to 60 votes needed to override a veto.

* The Washington Post and other journalists reported the existence of a 17-page EO draft to undermine November’s midterms, a plan that the Brennan Center for Justice reports included trying to rewrite election rules to gain control of election systems, attempting to intimidate election officials, defunding agencies Congress established to safeguard voting, and giving tacit approval of violence to overturn elections by pardoning Jan. 6 insurrectionists and unleashing ICE on communities.

 

How it could happen

Trump sought to set the stage in his speech last month, casting doubts in the minds of his base and maybe other Americans. So some see the possibility that select polling places could see federal agents present Election Day, and late that night the president could claim foreign interference, or say without proof that noncitizens used mail-in ballots or say voting machines were unreliable and order some ballot boxes seized – all illegal but beyond the power of courts to prevent on Nov. 3.

Seeing masked government agents or even National Guard units deployed at polling places is grim, said Virginia Burger, senior defense policy analyst at the Project for Government Oversight.

“The structural divisions between military operations and civil law enforcement – societal norms foundational to our democracy – are eroded, and the potential for violent conflict between Americans and their own military escalates,” Burger said. “Our apolitical military is a cornerstone of our democracy, and the domestic deployment of our troops raises concerns because it shatters that cornerstone.”

Trump’s had decades of being pampered by family or cowering colleagues, or of using bully tactics to get what he wants, so maybe he’s surprised when he loses. But whether Trump is viewed as delusional or dishonest, he’s becoming more dangerous and destructive.

Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-GA) said, “This is escalating quickly. Every single American should be alarmed.”

Dan Vicuña, a senior policy director at Common Cause, a national voting-rights watchdog group, said, “This is an unprecedented power grab that no administration has asked for before, and no court has ever authorized. They’re claiming legal authority to do this, but there really is none there. It’s very important for voting-rights groups on the ground to make clear to voters what the actual rules are and what the limits of the president’s authority is to make changes.”