Donald Trump recently gave a prime-time presentation on the vulnerability of US elections. Trump's concern about what he calls election rigging is more than ironic; it is disingenuous in light of his efforts to (1) cleanse the US of Hispanics, (2) destroy the impact of the African American vote, and (3) diminish the impact of the women’s vote. Despite the president complaining about illegal aliens voting, the facts suggest, as published by the Heritage Foundation, that there were only 68 instances of non-citizen voting spanning 40 years, against a backdrop of hundreds of millions of ballots over the period. In fact, it is the president who is primarily responsible for “rigging the elections.”
All of this is in the context of the fact that the one election on which he is fixated, the 2020 presidential election, is one of the two elections to date that his administration oversaw. The circumstances are further contextualized by the fact that he challenged that election in some 60 lawsuits and failed to win a case. In addition, Trump attempted to manipulate the election by demanding that the Secretary of State of Georgia manufacture votes in his favor.
Objectively, regarding the 2020 election, his own Attorney General, William Barr, declared that there was no widespread election fraud.
Regarding international interference, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence published a report on Russian Active Measures in the 2016 US Election on November 10, 2020. It concluded that:
The Russian government directed extensive activity, beginning in at least 2014 and continuing into at least 2017, against U.S. Election infrastructure at the State and local level…[redacted] The Committee has seen no evidence that any votes were changed or that any voting machines were manipulated.
On 10 March 2021, the Office of the National Intelligence Council published an unclassified Intelligence Community Assessment entitled Foreign Threats to the 2020 US Federal Elections; the Key Judgment 1 noted:
We have no indications that any foreign actor attempted to alter any technical aspect of the voting process in the 2020 US elections, including voter registration, casting ballots, vote tabulation, or reporting results. (emphasis in original)
The Assessment went on to outline efforts by Russian Intelligence, Iran, China, Lebanese Hizballah, Cuba, and Venezuela to interfere, but none to the extent that changed the Key Judgment 1. Once again, it is worth noting that the report was predominantly prepared during the time that the current director of the Central Intelligence Agency, John Ratcliffe, served as Director of National Intelligence under Donald Trump.
In fact, Trump’s own Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency, which identifies itself as the national coordinator for critical infrastructure security and resilience, released a press release on November 12, 2020, stating that:
The November 3rd election was the most secure in American history.
The joint statement further claimed:
There is. no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes or was in anyway compromised. (bold in the original)
Having determined that there is no material threat of non-citizens voting or fraud anywhere in the election system, the Trump administration has either threatened to:
- Jail Secretaries of State who administer elections
- Nationalize the Election process
- Interfere with the state's administration of elections
- Use the DOJ to collect state voter Data
- Use the FBI to seize ballots from states relating to the 2020 election
- Send ICE and possibly other paramilitary units to polling sites
- Fired the members of the Independent Election Assistance Commission
- Demanded that states engage in extreme gerrymandering
This is all consistent with his stated goals of:
- Not losing another election for 100 years if they pass the Save American Act.
- Trump advised Reuters on January 14, 2026, “When you think of it we shouldn’t even have an election”
It is clear that the president’s goal is power and control. Trump's leadership has little to do with a constitutional democracy, ensuring that all Americans are entitled to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness, or his responsibility to defend the Constitution, including, but not limited to, the 13th, 14th, 15th, & 19th Amendments.
Several commentators have suggested that President Trump will seek to nullify the midterm elections if the Republicans lose control of the House. Thomas Edsall in the New York Times has suggested that the:
Scenario would likely begin by Trump declaring that the election
results were rigged…and Federal authorities would require
investigation of the results before they were finalized.
This could be followed, according to Congressman Jim Hines, Ranking Member of the House Intelligence Committee, quoted in the Daily Beast:
Trump would deploy federal officers from the DHS to states to seize ballot boxes, He said if ballot boxes are seized and the chain of custody is broken “American democracy dies.”
It is unclear what the November elections will yield. But we face unprecedented federal interference in November elections from a president who has repeatedly demonstrated that he does not believe he must abide by the results of a free and fair election. The greatest defense that we have as citizens is to make sure that our votes are counted, whatever the circumstances that present themselves.
Walter H. White, Jr. is a member of the Board of Lawyers Defending American Democracy, a founding director and past chair of the ABA Center for Human Rights, and has served as an election observer in the former Soviet Union on behalf of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development.
