How can a person who has been lying every single day for the last 64 months about the outcome of the 2020 presidential election be trusted to make sure that this November’s voting will be safe, secure, and honest?
Yet that’s what President Donald Trump wants us to do. He is using all his power, with the collusion of a spineless Republican-led Congress, to make it more difficult for millions of Americans to cast their votes this fall and into the future.
He even fired his first-term attorney-general, William Barr, for having the audacity to speak the truth: that Trump’s own Justice Department found no evidence of fraud that could have altered the outcome of the 2020 election. This time, the post is held by an election denier who acts like she is Trump’s personal retribution attorney, not the nation’s chief law enforcement officer.
Trump has since surrounded himself with aides like Pam Bondi, who know better than to make Barr’s mistakes. Instead, they sit around the Cabinet table praising the emperor’s exquisite wardrobe.
The president is browbeating the Senate into lifting the filibuster rule so his followers can ram votes through on a party line for the deceptively named the SAVE America Act. So far, the GOP leadership is keeping the filibuster, mindful that when Democrats regain the majority, the tables could easily turn.
The legislation is advertised by the administration as protecting “election integrity,” but it is actually a massive hoax designed for voter suppression. The real voter fraud is this bill. The reality is that voter fraud is rare and insignificant. That helps explain why, after five years of lies about a stolen election, Trump has failed to come up with any hard evidence that could stand up in court, even one presided over by judges he picked.
The historic outcome of his attempted coup was a brutal assault on the US Capitol by a mob of his followers and his own impeachment for “incitement of insurrection.”
The SAVE Act would require all voters to have an ID with proof of citizenship, and it would severely restrict mail-in voting, something Trump himself and millions of others have used, and election experts say is safe and popular, including among Republicans.
Marc Novicoff, writing in the Atlantic, said Trump’s voter-ID requirement would “probably backfire” since voters who don’t regularly vote cast their ballots for Trump in 2024. “Making voting more difficult would most likely hurt Republicans’ chances,” he said.
Nonpartisan elections experts warn that this legislation “could disenfranchise millions of eligible voters by requiring new voters to provide documents that tens of millions of US citizens lack immediate access to,” The Washington Post reported.
The politically independent Campaign Legal Center has said that the bill’s restrictions “would actually amount to one of the harshest voter suppression laws nationwide,” The Washington Post noted.
Many see the legislation as part of an effort to intimidate minorities, new citizens, the poor, and the elderly. It creates a fear of ICE agents lurking at polling places waiting to seize people who don’t have the right skin color or accent.
It is fair to see this bill as part of a larger effort to steal November’s congressional election. Polls show that the chances of a Democratic victory are growing, and Trump told GOP lawmakers he fears that means being impeached for a third time (he already holds the world record of two).
In the 2012 campaign, Trump said, “Now that Obama’s poll numbers are in a tailspin – watch for him to launch a strike in Libya or Iran. He is desperate.” Obama’s approval rating at that time was 46%; Trump’s was in the high thirties last week. If you don’t see a connection between those numbers and the massive, undeclared war against Iran, you’re blind.
The president has been talking about nationalizing elections by usurping the states’ constitutional authority to run their own elections. Many Republican-controlled states are restricting early voting as well as the locations, hours, and number of polling stations in heavily Democratic areas.
Retired federal judge J. Michael Luttig, a conservative, has warned that Trump is seeking “to subvert the midterm elections.”
The president has threatened not to accept the results of November’s congressional elections unless “the elections are honest,” and of course, he would be the sole judge of that, as he is the sole judge of everything else.
His fear of defeat also prompted him to press Texas and other GOP-led states to hastily redraw congressional lines to create safer Republican districts. That may backfire, since several Blue states responded by also redistricting.
Republicans are looking for another boost from the US Supreme Court, which could soon rule on a case aimed at striking down provisions of the Voting Rights Act that until now have permitted some congressional districting based on race to correct past discrimination. If that happens, Republican-led states are expected to quickly redraw congressional maps to minimize minority representation.
Trump’s broader election power plays
Trump just added a new factor that could influence this year’s elections: the war in Iran.
Much will depend on the outcome, which he will declare as a great victory in any scenario, and it could play out in unexpected ways.
Democrats largely oppose the war, particularly since Trump launched it with no congressional consultation, often with conflicting explanations for why now, and no real communication with the American public.
A Washington Post survey shows that 74% of Americans fear he is leading us to a full-scale war. And many voters are asking whether this was another diversion from Trump’s Epstein scandal.
Most Republicans will cheer anything Trump does, especially since Iran is universally hated. But many are critical, particularly in growing numbers of his largely isolationist and increasingly discontented MAGA base.
They remember the day after his 2024 election when he promised, “I’m not going to start a war. I’m going to stop wars.”
They were unhappy last June when he bombed Iran and unhappier now, especially as American casualties mount, the fighting drags on, gas prices go up, inflation returns, and affordability becomes a more critical question.
The SAVE Act and Trump’s talk, threats, and demands about election reforms are false cures for a virtually non-existent problem.
The only election crisis facing this nation is the one Trump is trying to create by undermining Americans’ trust in our electoral system through fear, intimidation, and outrageous lies.
The writer is a Washington-based journalist, consultant, lobbyist, and a former legislative director at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.